Tobago Heritage Festival
The Tobago Heritage Festival is a two-week long event held to remember and celebrate the island’s cultural and ancestral heritage. The first festival was held in 1987 and this year’s event takes place between the 17th July and the 1st August.
Tobago has a diverse and unique culture, with influences from its original Amerindian inhabitants, former African slaves, and various European colonies. The festival celebrates aspects of all of these cultures and their influence on Tobago today.
Celebrations take on a wide range of styles, from dance festivals and traditional musical performances to historical re-enactments and feasts. One such feast is ‘Salaka Fest’ a feast of thanksgiving in which all diners acknowledge the ancestral spirits. Re-enactments play a large part of the festival. Traditional African wedding ceremonies are re-enacted, complete with traditional outfits, as well as re-enactments of the Belmannna Riots, in which former slaves, freed from Barbados and working as migrants in Tobago, rose up and demonstrated against the oppressive conditions in which they were still forced to work.
There are lighter re-enactments throughout the festival as well, such as the tradition of eligible men proving their suitability for marriage by chopping a large log into firewood to prove their strength. One of the most popular events of the festival is also the Ole Time Wedding, a massive ceremony for which all the guests wear traditional clothing, the men in top-hats and tails, and the women in extravagant dresses and wide-brimmed hats. After the wedding, the couple and all the guests walk through the village in a parade, accompanied by traditional music and dancing.
The festival closes with the Ole Time Carnival, another large procession featuring lively steel pan music and dancing. The party carries on right through until dawn, with many festival-goers dressing up as famous characters from Tobagonian folklore.
If you are attending the Tobago Heritage Festival, why not send us your story or photos? Send them to contribute@nccedu.com, and have the chance to win an MP3 player through our latest competition – Your Campus Needs You!
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