New music festival for St. Lucia features Hugh Masekela as headliner
The first annual Heineken Kalalu World Music Festival takes place December 1-4, 2005 in St. Lucia
Castries, St. Lucia (July 26, 2005) - Music aficionados from around the globe will soon have reason to focus on St. Lucia as the newest home of world music. The Heineken Kalalu World Music Festival takes place December 1-4, 2005, in St. Lucia at Samaans Park, Choc Bay. The first annual event to be held in the Caribbean, the festival features an authentic line-up of performing artists from the world music genre.
With Heineken as title sponsor, the Heineken Kalalu World Music Festival is envisioned as one of three annual anchor events hosted by the recently established St. Lucia Festivals Company – the other two events being a local and a regional festival of the performing arts. Tracey Warner-Arnold, marketing consultant for the festival and former assistant director of the St. Lucia Tourist Board, describes the music fest as a well-timed strategic undertaking, which responds to strong global demand for world music from a growing worldwide audience. World music is authentic ethnic-based music with international crossover appeal and no Caribbean island currently hosts this type of music festival.
“Early December is an ideal time to encourage arrivals as it has traditionally been a low period,” says Arnold about the time of year selected for hosting the event. “We are targeting the world music lovers from around the world as well as our Caribbean neighbors, particularly those from Barbados, Trinidad, Martinique, St. Vincent, Grenada, Dominica, Jamaica, and Antigua.”
The Heineken Kalalu World Music Festival can only build on the legacy of St. Lucia Jazz, as it will promote St. Lucia as a mecca for world-class performing artists and audiences from the Caribbean and around the world, and generate tourism business during an otherwise low period in the tourism cycle, says Adrian Augier, director of St. Lucia Festivals Ltd. Within the arts and entertainment industry there is no doubt that international festivals work to orient our artists with international standards in a way that helps them achieve a more global standard with their art.
The festival lineup, designed and executed in collaboration with New York-based Afromondo Productions, features a wide cross-section of artists from around the globe. South African Hugh Masekela headlines along with other established and emerging talent such as Idrissa Diop from Senegal, Emeline Michel from Haiti, Sensaccion Orchestra out of Cuba, Soukous Stars from the Congo, Jose Alberto from Puerto Rico, Yerba Buena from Venezuela, Sekouba Bambino from Guinea, and from St. Lucia Bluemangó and Ronald “Boo” Hinkson.
For more information contact Tracey Warner-Arnold at (758) 718-1510 or tarnold@kalalufestival.com.
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