Photo by Brian Jewell
“This is an official noise zone!”
Arlene Nash Ferguson stands before a room packed with a few dozen adults, each of us outfitted with drums, cowbells and other assorted noisemakers. In a matter of minutes, these travelers have cast off their inhibitions and embraced all of the noise and fervor of the Bahamas’ most important cultural tradition: junkanoo.
Ferguson is the executive director of the Educulture Junkanoo Museum, an institution she started in her childhood home in Nassau to teach locals and visitors about the roots of junkanoo dance and music. We spent some time with Ferguson exploring the exhibits in the front of the house, where she displays historic instruments and costumes, before retiring to “the Shack” in the back of the house, where Ferguson and her family make annual preparations for the holiday junkanoo celebration.
“We’ve been doing this for 200 years,” she tells us. “Under British law, slaves had three days off at Christmas, so they used that time to re-create West African festivals. I was introduced to junkanoo as a child on Christmas Eve and have worn a costume in the parade every year since childhood.”
Like many Bahamians, Ferguson and her family use the workroom on the back of their house throughout the year to construct the elaborate costumes and floats that they will use in the annual junkanoo parade, which lasts from midnight until late afternoon. When they’re not working in the room, though, they welcome groups like ours to experience a bit of junkanoo music for ourselves.
The experience is fun, interactive and incredibly loud. We taste special soft drinks prepared for the junkanoo parades and attempt to play our percussion instruments in time with the intricate rhythms of the traditional songs and dances. The sound that this room full of amateurs produces isn’t very musical, but it is awfully exciting.
