Exuma

Biography

Bahamian musician Tony McKay, from Cat Island, whose Exuma persona fused junkanoo, calypso, folk and rock into ecstatic music rooted in the Obeah tradition. His albums for #Mercury Records# and #Kama Sutra Records#, beginning with 'Exuma' (1970), sound like nothing else of their era — part carnival procession, part healing ceremony — and *Nina Simone* covered two of his songs. A fixture of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in later years, he died in Nassau in 1997.