Junkanoo festivities in George Town
Junkanoo, typically held on Boxing Day, is a national festival in the Bahamas and is the cultural highlight of the year.
The origin of the word ‘Junkanoo’ is hidden in obscurity. One thought is that it comes from the French word L’inconnu which means ‘the unknown’, referring to the masks worn by those parading through the streets. Some like the idea of ‘junk enoo’, the Scottish settlers’ term for ‘junk enough’, regarding the colorful miscellany of costumes and rudimentary musical instruments in the parades. Or it could refer to John Canoe, an African tribal chief who, although enslaved in the West Indies, demanded the right of his people to celebrate together.
The festival is hundreds of years old, having its roots in the 16th and 17th centuries when the slaves were given a holiday each year at Christmas time. Being allowed to leave the plantations for that one day, they gathered with family and friends to celebrate with African music, dancing and colorful costumes made with whatever they had at hand.
Today the festival has become an organized parade with elaborate costumes and banners made of tiny, intricately-designed strips of crepe paper, feathers and glitter in every color imaginable, fluttering as the paraders short-step or ‘merengue’ to the music of goat-skin drums, cowbells, conch-shell horns and whistles.
In Exuma, crowds of onlookers sing and dance along the sidelines as the parade passes through George Town’s main street to Regatta Park and back.
