Festival - Nation

Niu Hebridis Art Festival - Nation building is the key

Christine Coombe writes from Vila, New Hebrides, on the New Hebrides’ National Arts Festival (in Bislama, Niu Hebridis Art Festivolj planned for December 1-8, and of its significance for the process of nation-building on which New Hebrideans are now embarking.

‘We stand aside, incapable of feeling with these people or

sharing their joy, realising that

theirs is a perfectly strange at mosphere which will never be ours.’

I read the words above in Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific, a book by Dr Felix Speiser, written in 1913. Dr Speiser was writing about a custom dance he wit nessed in the New Hebrides, and he tells of how it grew from the pure joy of dancing and

lasted throughout the night,

with only the red lights from torches to shine on the naked blackness of the dancers’ bodies.

Non-New Hebrideans will always have to stand aside in matters of New Hebridean cul ture. However, we are now able to ‘share their joy’, and the ‘strangeness of the atmosphere’ can be ours, because the New Hebrideans now want to share their culture. They are proud of it. For them it means a unity which will enable them more

readily to stand independent

after their unique experience of so many years of joint Bri tish/French rule.

The desire for independence and a thirst for unity inspired the first National Festival of Arts due to be held in the New Hebrides from December 1-8.

Chief minister of the caretaker government of the New Hebrides, Fr Gerard Leymang, and his Deputy Chief Minister, Fr Walter Lini, gave their blessing to the mammoth undertaking in a news sheet published by the Arts Festival at the beginning of October.

With the signing of the first constitution of the New Hebrides on October 5, these ministers were heading a care taker government until after

the elections set for November 14.

The festival was planned to

take place throughout the

country’s capital, Vila, on Efate Island. More than 2000 par ticipants were expected in the capital from all islands in the group. It was planned as the largest and most comprehen sive festival of arts ever staged in the New Hebrides.

Never before had many of the traditional cultural events been staged outside the re

spective villages. Traditions

were once held sacred to a par ticular village. Now taboos are

being replaced by national

pride.

Custom-dancing from each island group was planned as a main feature of the festival.

Gongs were to sound out across the capital as the ancient art of

sending messages by this

means will be demonstrated.

Several islands were to show their ways of sacrificial pig

killing. A traditional marriage

ceremony was to be enacted publicly for the first time.

Demonstrations of cooking in earthen pits, basket and mat

weaving, canoe-making, pot

tery, poetry reading, pan-pipe

music and string bands, and the almost lost art of sand-drawing were all to be performed at three open air venues. Exhibits of artifacts, and some more modern crafts, were planned for various indoor venues. The Cultural Centre of Port Vila staged a special exhibition of photographs of the New Hebrides in the 19th century.

There’s no point in having a culture, whose richness we want to preserve, unless we practise it’ - this is the Melanesian ideal which bade fair to make the first National Festival of Arts a success.