Music In The Bahamas

The Music and the People of the Bahamas

The first known people to inhabit some of the 700 islands that make up the Bahamas, were the Taíno Arawak people who called themselves the Lukku-Cairi (island people). Somewhere between 300 and 400 CE archeological evidence shows that this group of people migrated from the shores of the Orinoco River in what is now Venezuela to Cuba and then the Bahamas. The Lukku-Cairi were a peaceful people. (Murray, 1999, p.10) Their peacefulness and generosity are written about by Christopher Columbus the diary of his first voyage to the new world. They had the misfortune of being the first people Christopher Columbus and his crew met in 1492. Columbus enslaved the Lukku-Cairi took them to Hispaniola and in the

process emptied the Bahamas of people. By the mid-1500s, most of the Lucayans had died (Granberry, 1981; Johnson, 1996) and the Bahamas became virtually uninhabited (Miller, 1945; Lawlor, 1998). An estimated 500 Lukku-Cairi were alive in 1550 from 300,000 in 1492. (Murray, 1999, p.16)
The music and the rituals of these first inhabitants of the Bahamas is now known only through similar communities on other islands of the Caribbean.

"The religious ceremonies that took place at gatherings and festivals were accompanied by music and dance. In the arieto people would sing and dance, in a circle with their arms intertwined, to the sound of a drum. One member, either a man or a woman, guided the group" (Sanjuro, 1986).
After being “empty” for almost 100 years the Bahamas next wave of inhabitants arrived in 1647. The English began arriving from Bermuda, as tensions rose in England over religious freedom and their civil war. William Sayle petitioned the British government on behalf of his company the Eleutherian Adventurers for the island that would become Eleuthera.
The next wave of inhabitants came in the form of British loyalist who fled the United States after the War of Independence. They began arriving, along with large number of enslaved Africans. The slave trade to the Bahamas would continue until 1838 when emancipation became legal. By 1818 enslaved people were no longer allowed to be newly brought to the Bahamas. The freedom in the Bahamas and its close proximity to Florida, also meant that many people including indentured Europeans, Seminoles and slaves escaped to the

islands.

Rake-n-scrape
Secular music was all once called Goombay in the Bahamas. Goombay is a word derived from the Gambian word gumbay meaning large drum. Traditionally this goat skinned drum was used to set and maintain rhythm. The first Africans that came to the Bahamas sought to recreate the music of their homelands. Anything at hand served as a musical instrument, including barrels and saws. The barrels became drums and the saw helped create rake-n-scrape music. A carpenters saw is scraped with a piece of metal like a screw driver, while being bent to create different sounds. At some point an accordion was added. Ophie, of the rake-n-scrape band Ophie and the Websites, says that this music “is a fusion of the European culture and the African culture”. Additionally, he points out that traditionally rake-n-scrape was played after community social events (Quadrille and Heel and Toe polka dances) until the “break of dawn”. According to the Smithsonian Folkways website, rake-n-scrape almost disappeared in the 1940’s. It made a comeback starting in 1969 as the islands pushed for their 1973, independence from Great Britain.
http://www.folkways.si.edu/ophie-webb-explains-bahamian-rake-n-scrape-music/music/video/smithsonian
Church Music
Patricia Bazard, the director of the Bahamian National Children’s Choir, describes the variety of music during a church service.

“You will find in our service a number of outside influences within the same service. You will find European influence where we will sing hymns. American influence where the choir will sing a Negro spiritual or a Black gospel song. And you will find the Bahamian flavor where we sing one of our old anthems (religious hymns) or one of our rhyming spirituals – all a part of the same worship experience.”
Sacred music has played a powerful role in Bahamian society. Some of the music uses the particular Bahamian flair for story telling by singing rhyming versus with a back-up chorus. The rhymer sings a story often improvised, based on the bible, actual events or imagined, in up to twelve versus and the chorus repeats the same refrain afterwards. Here is an excerpt from Run, Come, See Jerusalem, by the Blind Blake & Calypsonians, a song about the 1929 hurricane that sunk three boats.
It was in nineteen hundred and twenty-nine
Run come see, I remember that day pretty well
Nineteen hundred and

twenty-nine
Run come see, Jerusalem.

My God, they were talkin' 'bout a storm in the islands
Run come see, my God, what a beautiful morning
They were talkin' 'bout a storm in the islands
Run come see, Jerusalem

My God, there were three sails leavin' out the harbor
Run come see, there's mothers and children on board
They were bound for the island of Andros
Run come see, Jerusalem
My God, they were the Ethel and the Myrtle and the Pretoria
Run come see, and the Myrtle was bound for Fresh Creek
The Ethel was bound for Spanish Creek
Run come see, Jerusalem

JUNKANOO
It is generally believed that Junkanoo began during slavery in late 18th century. When British loyalist fled North America they brought an influx of enslaved Africans with them. During Christmas slaves were given three days off from work. During this time, they were allowed to gather and hold a dance, that incorporated singing, dancing, wearing masks and walking on stilts. Parts of this celebration came from the traditions of West African Poro and Egungun dancers. Today Junkanoo is still driven by music. Goombay, along with brass instruments, bicycle horns, whistles, cow bells, blowing conch shells and foghorns have been added (Chipman, 2004). Though traditionally celebrated on Boxing Day (the 26th of December) and again on New Year’s Day very early in the morning starting around one A.M., Junkanoo festivals are celebrated throughout the year.
Junkanoo above everything else is about the remembrance, the embracing and celebration of identity. The Nobel poet laureate from the island, St. Lucia, Derek Walcott, says “this shipwreck of fragments, these echoes, these shards of a huge tribal vocabulary, these partially remembered customs. They survived the Middle Passage… “

References
Murray, Allan G. 1999. Bahamian History Highlights - Condensed And Illustrated. Nassau, Bahamas. Media Publishing. p.16
Elena Perez Sanjuro, 1986. La Historia de la Música Cubana. The Journal of Christopher Columbus. http://www.justsalsa.com/culture/areito/
Granberry J. 1981. Spanish slave trade in the Bahamas, 1509-
1530: an aspect of the Caribbean pearl industry (Last Part). J Bahamas Hist Soc 3:17-19.

Miller WH. 1945. The colonization of the Bahamas, 1647-
1670. The William and Mary Quarterly 3rdSer 2:33-46.
Johnson H. 1996. The Bahamas from slavery to servitude, 1783-1933. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.
Lawlor A. 1998. The Eleutherian Adventurers. J Bahamas Hist Soc 20:4-9.