A piece of “kununku” in Curaçao Festival Center.
WILLEMSTAD--Thursday night's crowd puller at the “Kantadó Mayo” cultural song contest was Oriri, but on Wednesday the Curaçao Festival Center (CFC) had also been nicely filled with people who enjoyed Thalyssa Jano, T' Kayley Polonius and the formation “Hóben na Timon” on the second qualifying day.
The finals will take place on Saturday. Many artists who participated in the carnival-related Tumba Festival also registered for Kantadó Mayo.
The local “Seú” (Harvest) season has not been small-scale already for a long time. With early costume unveiling and a multi-day festival culminating in the annual cultural street parade on Easter Monday, it is moving towards a folkloric carnival.
But there is much more to seú, which can actually be divided into four phases: before 1863, when slavery still existed; after its abolition, but in which the “paga tera” principle involving land use in exchange for a share of the harvest to the “shon” (owner) was still used; at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, when government bought large pieces of “kunuku” properties to divide them up and the fourth, current phase, from 1975 to present.
This last phase can also be divided, because from 2003 seú groups increasingly switched to the use of the guitar and kuarta, which managed to take away the sharpness of the monophonic seú, with only instruments such as chapi, drum and kachu (horn).
