Culture of Haiti - Festivals

Festivals

The most festive time of the year in Haiti is during Carnival (referred to as Kanaval in Haitian Creole or Mardi Gras). The festivities start in February. The cities are filled with music, parade floats, and people dancing and singing in the streets. Carnival week is traditionally a time of all-night parties and escape from daily life. Rara, a festival which occurs before Easter, is celebrated by a significant number of the population as well, and its celebration has been led to it becoming a style of Carnival music. Many of the youth also attend parties and enjoy themselves at nightclubs called discos, (pronounced "deece-ko") (not like the discos of the U.S), and attend Bal. This term derives from the word ballad, and these events are often celebrated by crowds of many people.

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Famous quotes containing the word festivals:

    Why wont they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, cant they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping—rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year’s and Easter and Christmas—But, goodness, why need they do it?
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)