Impact of International Festivals and Cultural Exchange between the Blacks in Diaspora and Black Africa

Abstract

The study examines the impact of festivals and cultural exchange between blacks in the Diaspora and Africa, aiming to take a deeper view of these cultural exchanges have deepened the transatlantic relations between Blacks at the two poles of the Atlantic. The study contends that though the shipment of the Blacks to the New World during the (in) famous trans-Atlantic slave trade has fostered a hybrid culture in their new settlements, this cultural exchange turned into festivals by the New World repatriates in Lagos via the Fanti Carnival. However, the cultural exchange was deepened, expanded and became a worldwide phenomenon with the formal launching of the First World Festival of Arts and Culture in Senegal, in 1966; with a follow up in Nigeria in 1977 and again in Senegal, in 2010, sparking-off other miniature cultural fiesta at later dates. The study contends that the impact of these festivals both the cultural phase of the Pan-African movement, alliance building, and a platform for concretizing the cultural affinity between Diaspora Blacks and Blacks at home, tourism, decolonization of the mindset from the vestiges of crass Europeanization, cultural self-determination and cultural diplomacy amongst the Blacks on a global scale.