The Cultural Calendar reflects a heightened focus on performance arts and culture with a festival or event in almost every month of the year.

January

Film, Fine Art and Fashion

March - Heritage/Heroes Month

We learn, we remember, and during Heroes and Heritage month in March, we ponder the distant past. We honour our heroes and in cultural events and Indigenous People’s Day celebrations, we breathe life into the almost-lost traditions and tongues of a people here long before colonial wars, long before Columbus. For St. Vincent is the homeland, Yurimia the seat of the Garifuna Empire, this festival, at time of homecoming and pilgrimage, a time to reflect upon mysteries far beyond memory’s reach.

April - Gospel Fest & Easter Regatta

Gospel Fest

While Calypso is Carnival’s beat, Gospel music once was a story too, of a people’s faith amidst adversity. Today it is the joyful sound of choral voices raised in praises across the land. Past and present are honoured in April’s Gospel Music Festival, with zone competitions, a weekend concert at Kingstown’s Peace Memorial Hall, featuring international artistes and an awards ceremony.

Easter Regatta

We turn for the Regatta excitement to Bequia at Easter. Here in the Northern Grenadines our heritage is the sea, and on Bequia, 100 years ago, the work of a Scottish boat builder and a French whaler-man helped shape the “double-ender” sailing boats and the islands’ unique culture. Today, these boats are the highlight of Regatta and bring islanders out in the hundreds for racing, cheering and bay side partying. Other cultural traditions are remembered in the package of shore events, including the flag dance and folks songs, presented by the Canouan Regatta. On Bequia, witness and wonder how boat building evolves, as international yachts compete and the island’s fleet of 6-ft model boats battle in deep water.

May - Maroon & Arrowroot Festivity, Labor Day, and African Liberation Day

Maroon Festivity

While people of the lush St. Vincent hillsides celebrate harvest, Easterval festivities on Union Island originate in rituals to call forth rain. For here we celebrate the legends and legacy of another unique culture - the Maroons. Within the Caribbean revelry of this Easter event is the costumes and dancing, songs of Africa and the famous Big Drum Dance unique to the outhern Grenadines.

Arrowroot Festival

Our roots are in the land too, and we celebrate its bounty with song, dance and feasting in the Arrowroot Festival in northern St. Vincent in May. More than a harvest festival, this event reminds us of our earliest history, for the crop has likely been cultivated here for over 2,000 years.

June/ July - Carnival

From the first firecracker of New Year’s morning to the last dance of old Year’s night, St. Vincent and the Grenadines celebrates the vitality of this young nation and honours a sacred past with a year-round programme of visitor-friendly festival events. Our diverse histories become alive in dance and drama, storytelling, sport and song. We learn we wonder, we fete.

As only a Caribbean people can, we do all these things in the mas and magic of Carnival. In the many rural events and the midsummer splendor of Vincy Mas, Carnival celebrates a heritage of revelry, royalty and music. When steel pan orchestras play we hear the Caribbean’s unique music not yet 100 years old. The verses of our storytellers, the Calypsonians, reflect upon the soul of the nation today, our ills and dreams and aspirations; but from what history came their rhythm that’s Carnival’s heartbeat? Out of which pasts dance the mischief making characters of old Mas- the jab jabs, pierrots and jumbies, the boosey back, robbers and bats? We dance to calypso’s beat in the raw energy of the new Soca music, which carries a flag-waiving, jumping-up youth into a new Caribbean age, and we crown our own royalty-Soca Monarch, Calypso Monarch, Miss Carnival, the Prince and Princess and the King and Queen of the Mas Bands. As audience, or band member, we share the exhilaration and rapture of Mardi Gras when thousands of bejeweled masqueraders parade the street. We are all royalty for a day and we celebrate ourselves.

August - Emancipation Month

We celebrate the status of all as free individuals during Emancipation Month, in August. This is a festival not of laughter, but of learning, of remembrance and tribute to ancestors who travelled the Middle Passage. In cultural performances, lectures and exhibitions we learn about those who became enslaved and how all became free.

September - Dance Festival

We sing, we drum, and in dance discover more of ourselves. The National Dance Festival of event throughout September showcases traditional and modern works including African and contemporary Caribbean dance.

October - Independence Celebration activities

We look to the future; we look to the past and the diverse journeys we have taken today. October is Independence Month and in the parades of the 27th we celebrate our journey to full status as a free and independent nation in 1979.

November - Drama Festival

In November’s National Drama Festival, school, and community theatre groups give further insights into our society with a series of one act plays. Through the eyes of our performance artist we look to the future.

December - Nine Mornings/Christmas lighting activities

We remember, we reflect, and with song and laughter it is December’s National Christmas Festival- and we fete. Special events including the National exhibition lead to Nine Mornings - a festival unique to St. Vincent and the Grenadines - when communities throughout the country are ablaze with lights, music fills the air and from the first night of each of the nine days before Christmas, revelry takes to the street. In Kingstown are concerts, street dances, fun competitions and storytelling. The National Carolling Contest is a highlight.

Many social irregularities in St. Vincent are handled by the law—the real law. But the more irregular ones are dealt with by the people themselves, and one of the ways is by mock hanging. Sexual molestation of close relatives and animals is greatly frowned upon by the people to the extent that the culprit is subject to ridicule and a mock hanging.

The crime is first reported to a committee which is always ready to take up such a case. The mock policemen investigate and file a case against the culprit who is given a false name. Then preparations are made for the mock trial. By this time, the whole community is alerted and excitement builds. The whole thing becomes the talk of the community and people would gather in little groups whispering the news.

The community hall is usually chosen as the court house. Here the preliminary hearing and the High Court will be heard. When it is time for the first sitting, the public is invited to witness it. The whole is done as a normal court case. There is a judge or magistrate, lawyers, witnesses and police, all of whom carry false names. These names are usually designed to create laughter.

At this preliminary hearing, the witnesses give their statements in quite amusing fashion while the cross questioning provokes more laughter. The first sitting might go on for two nights. The case is then referred to the High Court. At the High Court, there is a jury made up of about twelve members. There are five policemen to call the accused and four at the door of the hall mainly to collect admission fees. There are about five witnesses in this case. This is to ensure that the evidence against the accused is incriminating enough to bring him guilty.

There would be the lawyers of the defence and those for the crown. Here the cross questioning is more detailed and the people laugh themselves to tears at the answers. At the end of the sitting the accused is found guilty and is sentenced to hang by the judge.

A moonlight night is always chosen for the hanging. Two effigies are then built. One, depicting the condemned man and the other depicting the victim of his molestation. Two poles, preferably of bamboo are planted in the ground with a cross piece at the top. A rope is tied to the cross piece with a noose hanging down. There is another end for pulling.

The effigy of the condemned man is built in such a way that by one tug of the rope, the head would be instantly detached from the rest of the body. The head is put into the noose and the hangman tugs at his rope and the effigy is hanged. After the hanging, the body of the effigy is then burned to ash. There is then a big jump up in the streets of the village. The music is supplied by boom drum with the flute playing the following tune:
“Do Reverend, do Reverend save me from the gallows
Me nuh go do that again. Oh!
Fire, fire een me wire wire. Oye! Oye!”

The people fete until morning.

Hanging helps to maintain social order in the areas in which it is practiced. Who knows? Many people who may want to deviate from normal behaviour are restrained by the silent threat of mock hanging. After all, nobody wants to be hanged—real or mocking.

The mandate of the Ministry of Culture is wide and covers all that is “the way of life of our people”. It may be noted that much that could be included in the work of the Ministry is specified in other Ministries. For example the cuisine of the country is a natural matter for the Ministry of Culture however there is Food & Nutrition Unit as part of the Ministry of Health and food is the main concern of the Ministry of Agriculture and further within the Ministry of Education the Home Economics Unit also looks at food. Against this coverage the Ministry makes its primary focus the preservation of physical and non physical aspects of heritage and the performance aspect of Culture.