Junkanoo

Junkanoo is the festival music of the Bahamas, created for the street parades held in Nassau on Boxing Day and New Year's Day. Massed ranks of musicians generate a dense, surging percussion texture from goat-skin goombay drums, cowbells (kalik), whistles, conch shells and brass, over which costumed dancers compete in organised troupes. Its repertory mixes traditional parade rhythms with goombay song, calypso and, in the hands of the *Baha Men*, international pop. The music is inseparable from the parade itself: competitive, communal and designed to sustain hours of dancing in the street.