First day of Junkanoo Jonkonnu, Junkanoo Jonkanoo, Jankunu, John Canoe or Johnkankus is a musical street masquerade, believed to be of West African origin, which occurs in many towns across the Caribbean every December 26 and New Years Day. The largest parade, Junkanoo, happens in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Junkanoo is a street parade with music, which occurs in many towns across The Bahamas every Boxing Day (December 26), New Years Day and, more recently, in the summer on the island of Grand Bahama. The largest Junkanoo parade in Bahama happens in Nassau, the capital. Jonkanoo (also spelled Jonkonnu or John Canoe) is a masquerade festival/parade from Jamaica, believed to be of West African origin. It is traditionally performed through the streets during the Christmas period, and involves participants dressed in a variety of fanciful costumes, such as the Cow Head, the Hobby Horse, the Wild Indian, and the Devil (Satan). The parade is accompanied by a band consisting of fife, drums, and a coconut grater used as a scraper, and jonkanoo songs are also sung. There is also a Jonkanoo pepper sauce, described as a carnival of red hot peppers blended with scallions, onions, thyme and garlic. The practice was once common in coastal North Carolina, where it was called John Canoe, John Koonah, or John Kooner. It may have influenced the Gulf Coast Mardis Gras. Historian Stephen Nissenbaum describes the ritual as it was performed in 19th-century North Carolina: Essentially, it involved a band of black men–generally young–who dressed themselves in ornate and often bizarre costumes. Each band was led by a man who was variously dressed in animal horns, elaborate rags, female disguise, whiteface (and wearing a gentlemans wig!), or simply his Sunday-go-to-meeting-suit. Accompanied by music, the band marched along the roads from plantation to plantation, town to town, accosting whites along the way and sometimes even entering their houses. In the process the men performed elaborate and (to white observers) grotesque dances that were probably of African origin. And in return for this performance they always demanded money (the leader generally carried a small bowl or tin cup for this purpose), though whiskey was an acceptable substitute. Nissenbaum likened john canoe to the wassailing tradition of medieval Britain, seeing in both a ritualized inversion of the established social hierarchy that provides, simultaneously, a temporary suspension and powerful reaffirmation of that hierarchy. Wassailing performed this inversion along the axis of social class, whereas the 19th-century American version of John Canoe performed it along the axis of race. Both John Canoe and Wassailing bear strong resemblance to the social inversion rituals that marked the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:01:19 +0000
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