Charleston Carifest

Charleston Carifest is a Caribbean Festival held in June in honour of Caribbean American Heritage Month and extends over four days. The celebration starts on Thursday, June 21, with a Symposium and Opening Reception at the College of Charleston 3800 Paramount Drive, North Charleston. Our featured country for 2018 is Cuba and Elvis Fuentes,a Cuban National will be the speaker. The Friday night event will feature an All White Salsa, Reggae, Soca Night at Sushi Blue. Saturday, June 23 is the big Carnival Day and features the Carnival Street Parade that ends at the Festival Village in Brittle Bank Park. Charleston Carifest promotes and preserves the cultural heritage of the Caribbean and serves to educate and unify the community. Charleston Carifest has a great lineup of Artists including Soca Artist Scrooge from the Virgin Islands,Sahara Reggae Band and MC Wayne Hall of Reggae Vibes Radio in Atlanta. The Festival Village will have various vendors with Caribbean food, arts & craft, and the atmosphere will be filled with music ranging from Steel Band, Reggae, Soca, to Calypso,for your dancing or listening pleasure, cultural dance performance and the sight of masquerades in beautiful Carnival attire. The street parade with Grand Marshalls Mayor Tecklenburg (invited) steps off at 4:00 pm from the Charleston Museum on John Street and travels down King Street to Sumter to Congress to Hagood to Fishburne and into the festival village in Brittle Bank Park, across from the city of Charleston Police Station.