News

A national symposium to decide on the way forward for Dominica’s World Creole Music Festival will be held soon to generate suggestions for improving the event.

Tourism Minister, Hon. Ian Douglas says while the festival has been held for several years there is still room for enhancement.

“After many years of hosting the festival, we had to go back to the drawing board and look at what has been working [versus]... the non- productive areas of the festival which could use tightening up. The intention is to continue making the festival one of the best ones in the region.”

The Minister says the pricing of the tickets may be revisited.

“Last year, the Prime Minister suggested that the ticket prices be reduced to $50 on the Friday night and we saw the most successful Friday night as far as revenue, crowd participation and patrons were concerned.  That is something we may want to look at again for 2013.”

Douglas says starting the Festival earlier on the Sunday will also be given further consideration.

“Persons have also said that starting earlier from about 4 or 5 pm on the Sunday night was another great idea.  It was a suggestion and it worked.  It allowed patrons to go home earlier instead of staying in the park till three or four in the morning when they had to work the next day.  So [this idea was] for all of the people who had to work the next day, and could not attend the festival in previous years. This is one of the aspects of the festival which we will continue to tweak.”

The question of including more local artists on the line-up will also be discussed.

“Maybe we need to bring in more young and upcoming local artists. We need to balance that against the need to have artists who can draw people into the festival because if some acts cannot draw people into the festival and excite them, then you cannot generate the revenue to make the festival viable.  As a result,  we may want to consider bringing in a top act like Akon and then building local acts around that big ticket instead of putting on six or seven bands in one night .We also have to think about the cost of bringing in someone like Akon, it may cost about one hundred thousand US dollars for just one act and that money could be used to bring in 5 or 6 acts from within the region so these are some of the things we have to weigh out and zero in on before making any concrete decisions for the 2013 World Creole Music Festival.”

The World Creole Music Festival was conceived out of a need to provide a platform for Dominican musicians and musical expressions, and to increase the island's visibility overseas.

The annual World Creole Music Festival was created in 1997 as a means of boosting tourist arrivals to Dominica (during its independence celebrations), and to increase revenue from stay-over visitors.

The introduction of the festival was also expected to broaden Dominica’s tourism product and to promote Creole music as a major musical art form.