UrbanCarnival Magazine Issue Series 1 Issue 1 | Página 3

FCARIBBEAN
L A U NCULTURE
TING

The dictionary explains “Flaunting” as a transitive verb which means “to exhibit ostentatiously”:
to show off that which you are proud of.

The Caribbean heritage is a soup of African, European, Asian, and Aboriginal cultures,
resulting in a group of people, diverse by region, passionate and expressive in socio-cultural behavior.
Located in the Western Hemisphere, bounded by the Caribbean Sea and The Atlantic
Ocean, the Car-ibbean region host approximately 7,000 islands with 25 countries of
which 13 are independent island countries.
Although each country in the region have similar cultures, they are unique in their
own rights, influ-enced mainly by colonize history. A trip through the Caribbean
region is a unique and varied experi-ence in food, music and festivals reflecting the
heritage of that nation.
Out of all the festivals celebrated in the Caribbean the most popular is Carnival, a
street performance that celebrates freedom. This artistic marvel of colourful costumes
and design, gathers all other cultural ex-pressions of culinary, art, music, and dance
into one or two days of massive euphoria.
The passion for carnival is an integral part of the Caribbean people as is evident by
the existence of a carnival wherever they reside worldwide, however, it is not not limited to the Caribbean people, this infection has permeated into other cultural groups
as well where elements of the carnival are included in their own festivals, copied and
event introduced into their own artoistic expressions. There are now Caribbean styled
carnivals in countries worldwide.
This phenom-enon can be described as “cultural reflection”.