Augusta's promising new signature cultural event that begins tonight -- the Westobou Festival, or just Westobou -- is starting big. Really big.

But it has all the feel of becoming huge in years to come.

Named for the Westo Indians' word for the Savannah River, the 10-day festival will be a breathtakingly sweeping celebration of the visual, musical and performing arts.

It will include events, performances and exhibits downtown, at Paine College and at Augusta State University -- beginning with a must-see free concert by "Ed Turner and Number 9," a local band famous for spot-on re-creations of the Beatles' best hits, at 6:30 tonight in the Augusta Common, and concluding with the much-anticipated Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt concert Sept. 27 at Bell Auditorium.

All along the way, there will be dancing and singing and book-and-poetry readings and exhibits ranging from the Inventions of Da Vinci to the legacy of our homegrown Godfather of Soul, James Brown.

Each night, the walls surrounding the August Common will be alive with springing, stretching, elegant images of dance -- a perfect metaphor for a celebration of the arts.

Nor should we lose sight of the heart of Westobou: the Arts in the Heart festival, a potpourri of the visual and performing arts and a bow to the area's rich ethnic and cultural diversity, back for its 28th year. Westobou came about, as a matter of fact, when the local Porter Fleming Foundation, which has been funding arts organizations for years, teamed up with the Greater Augusta Arts Council to take things to an entirely unprecedented level in these parts.

The ambitious result: over 200 Westobou events, and a similar number of Arts in the Heart offerings.

Augusta has long had a thriving arts community -- not always cohesive and coordinated, either. Westobou has the potential to change that, and to bring about vastly increased unity, cooperation and solidarity in the arts here.

Westobou is creating new events, but just as importantly is enhancing existing ones and breathing new life into arts organizations throughout the Central Savannah River Area.

Because of all that, this has all the earmarks of a watershed moment in Augusta history -- the moment when we created a regional cultural and arts festival to rival anything in the region. The moment when we finally put all the pieces together to form a beautiful new mosaic.

Just the amount of cooperation necessary to stage this massive festival is reason enough for celebration.

But the best thing about it all may be the chance to re-connect so many of us to downtown, to Paine, to ASU and to the artists and entertainers that bring life to the workaday world.

It's not the government that defines a community. And a city's infrastructure is only its skeleton, not its soul.

To see a people's soul, you look to the culture they create and leave to their children and grandchildren. The arts -- and how committed we are to them -- say infinitely more about who we are than our roads and bridges or the clothes we wear to work.

After experiencing Westobou, you may shake your head at the breadth of it, or marvel at the astounding talent here. You may want to pick up a paint brush or a microphone or even your checkbook, to help these always-struggling arts organizations along.

But mostly you'll be wondering -- why did we wait so long to do this?