2nd Annual Cultural Fusion Extravaganza

Limbo was a great audience participation activity at the Cultural Fusion Extravaganza.

Chris Abbott

Editor

Bringing the community together with music, dancing and food

The second annual Cultural Fusion Extravaganza, August 8 in Simcoe, featured live music, dancing, singing, drums, good food… and fire.

The cultural showcase on Argyle Street, hosted by JK’s Restaurant, ran from 11 a.m. to… at least 11 p.m.

“This year’s theme is ‘Heritage in Motion, Many Origins, One Journey,’” said JK’s Kathyann Fearon, co-organizer with Jerneil Fearon, and their family.

“It’s about bringing the community together, bringing some of our culture,” said Kathyann.

“It’s been a pretty good day so far. People are coming and going all the time and enjoying what they are seeing. Look, they’re doing the limbo now!”

Young children enjoyed a ‘Kiddies Corner’ which included face painting and colouring, and Andy the Balloon Guy was on site.

“We had a few singers,” said Kathyann. “It started with country, then Hannah (Dolson) played from 2-3, and we have some steel pan (Panman Pat) right after this. And a calypso singer (Brown Sugar).”

Highlight of the day was Toronto’s Chris Precius from Fire10 Entertainment, known for fire eating and breathing, Caribbean drumming and dancing, limbo and reggae performances (www.fire10ent.com).

Precius led a fun audience-participation drumming session… followed by limbo for kids, teens and adults, which had people lining up to find out ‘how low they could go’ under the wooden bar.

“He (Precius) will be doing drumming, dancing and will finish off doing fire,” said Kathyann. “Right now he’s just engaging with people, everybody is drumming.”

The fire dance was a showstopper – Precius let it all go, rapid firing fire again and again and again, amazing the children in the audience, and finishing off with audience participation dancing. His engagement with the crowd was ‘next level.’

Food and beverages at the Cultural Extravaganza were available from JK’s Restaurant and La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant.

Booths were run by Liquidation & Discounts Outlet (Simcoe), Sovee’s Sweets (Hamilton), and Nick’s Sweet Tooth, a local enterprise by Nicholas Fearon, now in his third year offering flavoured cotton candy and snow cones.

The ‘After Party’ was scheduled to run from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. after all the kids went home, said Jerneil.

The one-day festival started small, but the Fearons hope to see it grow from year to year.

“We are trying to make it an annual event,” said Kathyann. “Last year when we started it was just us (JK’s Restaurant). We invited a few more vendors this year… but getting to this point has been really hard. When people started walking in at 11 this morning, we were still setting up. Getting the barricades (to close Argyle Street) kind of pushed us behind.

“We would like to see the community come together, and we’re going to make it bigger and better.”