Chairman of the Dominica Festivals Committee (DFC), Colin Piper, has said that over the last five years there has been a growth of 100 percent in turnout of patrons at the annual Jazz ‘n Creole Festival.
The 2015 edition of the festival will take place at the Cabrits National Park on Sunday 24th May.
“We have two forms of data that we have been able to identify, one is showing that, I think as of the last survey, that 20 percent of the patrons at the event were actually visitors,” he stated. “So in one regard that’s good news and the other indicates that when we started in year one there were 600 people that attended and last year we had I think close to 1,300…so we grown a 100 percent in five years.”
However, Piper the intention is not to grow the event to be as big as the World Creole Music Festival.
“Now again everybody knows Fort Shirley and there will be a carrying capacity in Fort Shirley so the intention is not to grow this thing to be as big as the World Creole Music Festival, it’s to make sure that’s a quality event,” he said.
He mentioned further that if there are huge crowds, there might not be enough space for kids to play and the family atmosphere will be lost.
“So we have to take all of that into consideration,” Piper said.
Dominica’s own, Michele Henderson, is among the line up for this year’s event, including three other acts, Barbadian Aturo Tappin, Ronald Tulle and Ralph Thamar of Martinique.
An Afro-Cuban/Brazillian Jazz band from a university in the United States, for the first time, also forms part of the event.
I think now is the time to think outside the box. It’s time to think of a new venue to host the annual festival. I have one in mind. It’s called Benjamin’s Park in Portsmouth. You should seek to grow this festival bigger than the Creole Music Festival.
We need to think of developing Benjamin’s Park and encourage more business in the Northern part of the island and Portsmouth is an excellent venue for future growth of this and other ventures.
Jazz festival beautiful for Dominica, in the having of having a good time we have it down pact to a tee. So now we must spend more time in other areas like running profitable busineses. Not enough time spend in other areas of our lives to much money are living our hands. We a pro free markets to give our money to other people. We spend every thing with other people, we go to our leader and ask them to go over seas and beg for us as kids who needs candy. No one will never respect us as a race . In the world as we know it our leaders and us are proffesional beggers, I know we are poor and have pain , but we have to do it for our self. We must fall flat on our faces and do it for our selves. We must stop taking help from people, thats the only way we will succeed. Cut back on drinking save more