Every year, Port Vila is taken over by Fest'napuan - a four day music festival created to promote contemporary music in Vanuatu.

It's the biggest event in the country - a chance for local bands to perform in front a large audience and to mix it with big international acts.

Tania Nugent: "Napuan" means music and dance in one of the languages from the island of Tanna, and Fest'Napuan is a celebration of Vanuatu's contemporary music and dance.

Ralph Regenvanu is festival co-ordinator: When we established the festival in 1996, it was to mark the anniversary of the opening of the new National Museum building. With the museum we're celebrating things from the past and so we wanted to celebrate our contemporary culture, to show that our culture is always evolving.

Tania Nugent: On the grounds in front of the museum, the stage is being set.

Ralph Regenvanu: When we started it was very basic. We had gravel heaped up as the stage. We rolled it flat and stuck bits of plywood on it and put telephone poles up and strung a tarpaulin as the roof. Every year since then we've upgraded to now where we are now with a permanent stage and our own sound system for the first time.

We want to try and lift up the level of skills of our people in things like stage managing, wiring a sound system, running a festival and all the various jobs involved in that. Especially those that have been kicked out of the formal education system, to be able to get some sort of work experience, to then get some sort of a job.

Tania Nugent: Willy Alfred is the lead singer of local band Nauten. They've just released their third album and Fest'Napuan is the perfect chance to promote it.

Willy Alfred, Nauten Band: Nauten band emi form taim long fest'Napuan i fom. //Nauten band emi no missim wan Fest'Napaun festival. Emi attendim evri Fest'napuan festival since long 1996 taim fest napuan emi bon kam kasem today. (Nauten band formed at the same time Fest'Napuan formed. Nauten band hasn't missed one Fest'Napuan. We have attended every Fest'Napuan since 1996 from when the festival started through to today.)

Tania Nugent: The festival has kept many local bands like Nauten alive, with the annual opportunity to play on a proper outdoor stage, with professional sound and lighting before a crowd of thousands.

Ralph Regenvanu: It's through the festival directly that we're seeing bands really go to new levels of experience and talent and the kind of music we're producing in Vanuatu. A good example is Naio band, which is probably our most famous reggae band, and I remember seeing them for the first time in Fest'Napuan in 1997 and they were just a group of young kids out of high school, and through Fest'Napuan we've watched them evolve and now they've toured internationally and a very, very well known band in the region.

We're actually seeing many many different styles of Vanuatu music coming out. The first night of Fest'Napuan is the Fest'Nalenga, which is the stringband music. String band is something you find throughout Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, but our local style is very distinct from those styles.

But also we're having bands like Kulja Riddim Klan, who are now starting to mix up a lot more traditional music with contemporary and also seeing people starting to use the kustom styles much more in the modern amplified, electrical music.

Tania Nugent: Australian band San Lazaro are experiencing ni-Vanuatu hospitality for the first time. They'll perform on two nights at Fest'Napuan.

Elisha Maiyiah, San Lazaro: We're all from Melbourne and we basically got together with a shared interest in Latin music. I think there's a lot of reggae here so it will be interesting to see how the Latin music goes down.

Richard Shing, Kulja Riddim Klan: Fest Napuan provides an opportunity for outside bands to display the different types of music they have. A lot of these small bands are picking up little bits and pieces, you can see it.

The band 26 roots, I've heard a little bit of their music, it's reggae but it's got a little bit of blues in it. It's jazzy, it's a different kind of reggae, and I think it's because of the influence of these outside bands. You hear them all the time on the radio but it's only when you actually see a band playing live that it influences you.

Ralph Regenvanu: It's the only thing like this that happens in Vanuatu and people love it when you get that mixing up of styles and influences and inspirations and I think it's really contributed to the development of life in Vanuatu - the cultural life of a nation.