Caribbean Festival of Arts twice. Once in 2008 when Guyana took up the challenge and again in 2010 when they had shown no intentions of hosting it. The future of CARIFESTA seems to be strengthening as Haiti bids to host the event in 2015. During an address at the 33rd Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Caribbean Community, hosted in July 2012 in Saint Lucia, Haitian President Michel Martelly asserted that receiving CARIFESTA in his country would make it possible to increase cultural relations with other neighbouring nations. Caribbean Festival of Arts Caribbean Festival of Arts, commonly known as CARIFESTA, is
Michel Martelly called compas, the only music allowed under the Duvaliers." After the 1991 Haitian coup d'état saw the expulsion of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, "Martelly opened a Pétion-Ville club called the Garage, where he entertained many of the coup's main architects, including the much-feared chief of national police, Michel François, later convicted in absentia for massacring Aristide supporters." Martelly has been heralded as a pioneer of a unique genre of compas, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language. Originally, compas, was the creation of Nemours Jean-Baptiste. Martelly, a keyboardist and the self-proclaimed "President of Compas," popularized a