HOME SWEET HOME: JUNKANOO AS NATIONAL DISCOURSE IN THE BAHAMAS.

   Wake up early one morning,
   Kiss my mama good-bye.
   "Going back to de island," I say,
   "Don't worry mama, don't cry."

With this refrain--in words so clearly expressive of travel, displacement, kinship, and the concepts of home and away--the song "Back to the Island" (Big Beat 92190-2) calls forth an image of the Bahamas as a nation. The concerns raised by this text were mirrored and amplified in a conversation into which I fell while waiting to be seated at Cafe Johnny Canoe in Nassau. My companion that evening was Tinkle Hanna, a Bahamian musician and member of the National Junkanoo Committee, and he was sharing some recent family news with me.

   My sister-in-law is staying with us for only a few more days.... See, she
   wants all her kids to be Bahamian, and you have to be born here to qualify
   for dual citizenship.... She's been here for six weeks now and her baby is
   four weeks old.... Oh yes, they're both doing great.... Her husband is back
   in Chicago with her three older children.... You know, she met him in
   college, fell in love, and decided to settle down there.... She comes home
   as often as she can, though.... I think they might move back to Nassau
   someday. (Hanna 1999a)

Both the lyrics and the conversation are saturated with diasporic narratives and address concerns related to attachment and belonging--concerns that are ultimately connected to processes of what Michael Herzfeld (1997) has called "cultural intimacy."(1) As such, they are part of a more extensive discourse within which Bahamians are defining, producing, articulating, consolidating, and imagining their postcolonial cultural identity(ies).

In this article, I would like to focus attention on the ways in which Bahamians are using music to facilitate and extend this discourse. Simon Frith (1996, 124) has observed that "Music constructs our sense of identity through the direct experiences it offers of the body, time, and sociability, experiences which enable us to place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives." Viewed from this perspective, music proves to be a powerful means through which the time-space of the Bahamian "march towards national identity" (Dahl 1995) can be illustrated and theorized.

Junkanoo music, which functions as a particularly powerful mechanism of cultural intimacy in the Bahamas, focuses this discussion, enabling the complexities of the Bahamian national identity to be viewed from multiple perspectives. Junkanoo exists both as a festival music and as a popular music, the latter drawing its legitimacy from the former. Although these two types of junkanoo are intimately connected to each other, they also facilitate separate and quite different discursive spaces within which the nation is imagined and narrated. Both forms of junkanoo incorporate and embody a wealth of cultural markers, actively remapping and mythologizing history through a dance of simultaneous remembering and forgetting. In this article, I begin to illustrate the multiple ways through which the forms of junkanoo work together--and, in some cases, against one another--in constructing overlapping spheres of nationalist discourse. I then place these functions within a more theoretical framework, interrogating the space between the two forms of junkanoo by examining areas of commonality as well as the distinct functions of each.

During a discussion of the merits and limitations of Benedict Anderson's concept of the imagined community (1991), Ulf Hannerz (1996, 21) writes: "Now that media technology is increasingly able to deal with other symbolic modes, ... we may wonder whether imagined communities are increasingly moving beyond words." Both forms of junkanoo provide interesting affirmation of this idea, and I offer here several perspectives that provide insight into the relationship between music (body), nationalism (time), and community (sociability) in the Bahamas. In order to provide a context within which the connections between nationalist thought and junkanoo can be analyzed fruitfully, however, it is necessary to trace just the barest outlines of Bahamian history.

Christopher Columbus happened upon the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, when he made landfall on the island of Guanahani and promptly christened it San Salvador. Although the islands lacked the natural resources important to the royal coffers of Spain, the Arawak Indians constituted a valuable labor source and, as such, were rapidly pressed into slavery on other Caribbean Islands. Many died from exposure to European diseases and, by 1520, the Bahamas had been all but completely depopulated. Anthony Dahl (1995, 1-2) sees this tragic series of events as indicative of the Bahamian condition throughout its history:

   These Arawaks, then, are the first Bahamians to feel the impact of foreign
   intervention and influence on their lives and society, and we find that
   from the Arawaks right down to the Bahamians of the present, Bahamian
   culture and literature has been produced under a situation of dependency,
   in the sense that the needs and hopes of the Bahamian people to chart and
   direct our own economic and political destinies, to create societies which
   responded to our way of being and developed according to our own ideas ...
   have constantly been sidetracked by the imposition on Bahamians of the
   ideas, plans and needs of forces that have come from outside the area.

The Bahama Islands were settled by the British in the seventeenth century. The years between 1783 and 1785 found 6,000-8,000 loyalists, along with their slaves (10-100 per family), leaving the newly independent United States and settling in the Bahamas. This influx of families and slaves proved to be one of the most formative demographic moments in the history of the Bahamas. According to government estimates, the white population doubled during this period, while the black population tripled. As a result, current government estimates suggest that 85 percent of the population is of African descent, while the remaining 15 percent is of European descent.(2) As we shall see, race is problematic in the national imagination, a fact that plays itself out in the rhetoric of unity surrounding the junkanoo festival.

On January 10, 1967, the Progressive Liberal Party won the national election, marking the first time in the history of the Bahamas that the majority of the population was represented in government. Riding a wave of popular support, the new government initiated a strong push toward independence from England, and on July 9, 1973, the flag of the newly independent Bahamas was raised over Nassau. In the foreword to Independence for the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, the most pressing argument for independence reads as follows: "Above all, Independence will enable the Bahamian people to find their true identity and to establish that freedom towards which all men aspire and to which, all are entitled" (Cabinet Office 1972, 7; italics added). How Bahamians would find their true identity, however, was a source of great concern. Catherine Hall (1996, 65) points out that questions such as "Who are we? Where do we come from? Which `we' are we talking about when we talk about `we'? ... have a new salience in the contemporary moment."

The euphoria of independence was paralleled by a growing desire for an articulated and visible postcolonial identity--a desire stemming from a distinct lack of confidence in Bahamian cultural expressions. During an interview in 1997, Tinkle Hanna recalled that many Bahamians became reticent to express aspects of their own culture and heritage during the period between the late 1940s and independence. At issue was respectability; with so many cultural alternatives from which to choose, many Bahamians felt that their own culture did not offer the means by which they could become upwardly mobile. Radio, television, sound recordings, and magazines provided ample opportunities for Bahamians to look toward other cultures for identity. Rex Nettleford (1993, 129), arguing from a pan-Caribbean perspective, has called this process the "hijacking of the region's media, the invasion of the Caribbean people's intellectual space, and the cultural bombardment of the entire region by every means possible from North America."

The physical interposition of the Bahamas between the United States and the rest of the Caribbean, however, has meant that the Bahamas has also absorbed the impact of cultural expressions radiating from larger Caribbean nations such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Tobago. This Bahamian sense of insecurity, of cultural invisibility, is well illustrated by attitudes toward popular music. For example, reggae and calypso enjoy global popularity. The same can be said for rhythm and blues and jazz--styles emanating from the United States. Yet, who, other than the tourists who visit each year, has heard of or noticed goombay, rake-and-scrape, or junkanoo?

By the late 1970s, a growing patriotism began to draw Bahamians toward reidentifying and reappropriating those practices and symbols that might assist them in creating and maintaining a distinct cultural identity. Arjun Appadurai (1996, 15) insightfully characterizes the agenda that fuels this postindependence cultural project: "Culturalism ... is the conscious mobilization of cultural differences in the service of a larger national or transnational politics. It is frequently associated with extraterritorial histories and memories ... and almost always with struggles for stronger recognition from existing nation-states or from various transnational bodies."

It was during this urgent search for culturalisms that junkanoo was seized upon and rapidly pressed into service as a central and defining symbol of Bahamianness. Junkanoo is a festival with roots in the mythological, African past; it became an important slave celebration sometime after the loyalists settled in the Bahamas.(3) Slaves were given a special release from their duties in the early morning hours of Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year's Day, a time when they were permitted to leave the plantations in order to congregate and celebrate with family and friends. As a result, junkanoo became a nighttime festival and was largely ignored by the rest of the population.

After emancipation in 1838, junkanoo continued to be celebrated, yet, like Carnival elsewhere in the Caribbean, it was highly stigmatized by the establishment. The African roots of the music, combined with the violence and disorder that occasionally accompanied the celebration, caused widespread concern among the middle and upper classes. As in the early steelband movement in Trinidad and Tobago, rival groups would "rush" the streets during the celebration and compete with each other in an attempt to defeat the other groups through music, costumes, and, on occasion, through violence.(4) The government attempted to stop the celebration on several occasions and, when that failed, passed laws limiting it in various ways.(5) Thus, while junkanoo continued to be celebrated, political pressure, in conjunction with middle- and upper-class resistance to the practice, kept it from gaining popular acceptance during the nineteenth century. Gradually, however, the celebration became less controversial, and by the middle of this century, junkanoo was a reasonably well-accepted Bahamian cultural marker.

Because junkanoo is a nighttime festival and is celebrated not as a pre-Lenten but as a Christmas festival, it is distinct from Mardi Gras and Carnival, as celebrated in other parts of the Caribbean. Ironically, one of the most dramatic influences on junkanoo in this century has been tourism since World War II. As a result of interest on the part of visitors, in the early fifties enterprising merchants on Bay Street began to sponsor junkanoo and organized the celebration into a formal parade with rules for competition and prize money.(6) Consequently, junkanoo was progressively transformed into a spatially fixed event. While smaller celebrations do take place throughout the Bahamas, the primary location of junkanoo is Bay Street in Nassau. By the time the Bahamas gained independence, the popularity of junkanoo was such that it was recognized as a politically and nationally powerful symbol. While the festival is open to tourists, and many visit each year, the festival is for and about Bahamians and has become an embodied experience that locates the Bahamas in a very specific and bounded way, distinguishing it from other nations and offering a musical event through which Bahamians can participate in the nation.

Postindependence efforts by the state have contributed a great deal to this perception of junkanoo. These efforts focused on creating a unifying and universalizing approach to junkanoo, an agenda exemplified by the fact that the government absorbed the privately administrated Masquerade Committee into its Ministry of Tourism. In addition, the first prime minister (since 1992, leader of the opposition), Lynden O. Pindling, participates in the festival each year. Maureen DuValier, one of the most famous junkanoo women, has noted that this top-down participation in the festival has contributed to a sense of community pride. Robert Simms, musical director of the "Valley Boys" junkanoo group, expands on DuValier's thoughts:

   Particularly now with the increased sense of awareness--like Maureen
   mentioned the Prime Minister: he turned the thing around. When he started
   "rushing" back in 1968 or 1970, when he became Prime Minister, people
   realized--hey, that's the Prime Minister rushin'. Well if he could do it,
   God knows who might.

      And then the other politicians started to get involved. And so there it
   was that this status kind of a separation thing that we had had, became
   eliminated.... And so the barriers started to crumble, and the stigma
   started to disintegrate. (Quoted in Sands 1989, 100)

The involvement of the state in promoting a sense of shared space and community, of a union between state and nation, is indicative of cultural intimacy. Herzfeld (1997, 28) suggests that cultural intimacy can be developed through sources of national embarrassment: "national embarrassment can become the ironic basis of intimacy and affection, a fellowship of the flawed, within the private spaces of the national culture." The history of junkanoo is clearly marked with less-than-desirable episodes of social and racial stigma. The deliberate involvement of the state in the festival and the subsequent broadening of social involvement in it seem to point to a process through which the newly independent state shaped and continues to fashion cultural intimacy.

The particular remapping of history that has allowed junkanoo to serve as an essentialized representative of Bahamian culture also tends to support this idea. For example, the use of brass instruments in junkanoo betrays the obvious influence of British brass bands on the music but does not seem to figure in a Bahamian understanding of the music. Another example of this is the fact that junkanoo may well have been a pan-Caribbean festival for many years, but this history has no impact on a Bahamian sense of ownership. As Maureen DuValier has stated, "It's [our] culture. We were born into this, and we are the only people in this whole world that can boast Junkanoo, you know" (quoted in Sands 1989, 97). Or Patrick Rahming's simple statement: "Junkanoo belongs to Bahamians" (Rahming 1989).

The present rhetoric hailing junkanoo as the great equalizer is belied by several obvious social distinctions within the practice. As Vivian Nina Michell Wood (1995, 500) has observed, "Women perform in a capacity that is totally different from that of the men; the middle class dominates the front line, while the back line remains the domain of the grass-roots; and whites are more likely to be involved in the costume arts than in music." This deliberate discourse of unity in conjunction with the selected forgetting of various aspects of the history of junkanoo in the Bahamas seems to confirm Jonathan Boyarin's conclusion that, "What we are faced with--what we are living--is the constitution of both group `membership' and individual `identity' out of a dynamically chosen selection of memories, and the constant reshaping, reinvention, and reinforcement of those memories as members contest and create the boundaries and links among themselves" (Boyarin 1994, 26).

This contested ground is exemplified by the spontaneous participation of scrap groups in each junkanoo festival. These scrap groups do not compete in the festivities, nor do they prepare for the event. Rather, they deliberately ignore the organized aspects of junkanoo, participating for the sole purpose of enjoying the spirit of the musical event. These performers are, in effect, calling attention to the way that junkanoo was celebrated less than fifty years ago (before the institutionalization of the festivities). I suggest that this activity is an example of social poetics in the Bahamas. In other words, the tension between official and lived understandings of junkanoo is acted out on a national stage. Herzfeld (1997, 26) argues that "it is the specific task of social poetics to reinsert analysis into lived historical experience and thereby to restore knowledge of the social, cultural, and political grounding--the cultural intimacy--of even the most formal power and the most abstract knowledge."

Festival junkanoo, then, provides a site wherein both government and people interact with and restructure the face of the nation. It is embodied and located in a specific place. In addition, myths surrounding the origins of junkanoo lend the event a certain timelessness, a timelessness that is reinforced by the actual performances. As groups rush down Bay Street, the music of one group blends into the music of the next, fashioning the performance and, by extension, Bahamian history, as a long and seamless event. Thus, junkanoo offers a very specific image of the nation, one that is timeless and mythical, spatially bounded, and embodied in community performance. This historicized approach to the nation is counteracted by the commentary on history and the nation introduced by the performances of the scrap groups and, as we shall see in the following discussion, by popular junkanoo as well.

Festival junkanoo is paralleled by a more recent development in Bahamian popular music, also called junkanoo. Whereas festival junkanoo inscribes place, time, and people within a dramatic experience, popular junkanoo concerns itself with the borders of the nation, looking outward as well as inward. Popular junkanoo, nevertheless, draws legitimacy from its connections to festival junkanoo, connections that are drawn on at least two levels. First, the rhythms and instruments used in festival junkanoo constitute the base upon which artists build their songs. Second, the texts frequently invoke images of the junkanoo festival itself and often, but not always, are related to other cultural themes.

As festival junkanoo became more popular, Bahamian musicians began to realize that the rhythms and sound ideals of the festival music could, if integrated into their style, combine to create a distinctive Bahamian sound. This sentiment is illustrated in the lyrics of a 1978 hit song by Frank Penn titled "Stay in the Bush": "Take some pride in this place we call home by playing music of our own / In the bush, Lord, in the bush. We've got to stay in the bush." The goat-skin drums, cowbells, whistles, foghorns, and conch shells used in this song all reference the festival, while simultaneously combining to create a sound unique within Caribbean musics of the mid-1960s and 1970s.

Tinkle Hanna (1999b) has observed that "Junkanoo is, above all else, a rhythm." This rhythm is constructed by combining various layers of drums and percussion instruments. The drums are divided into three groups (first, second, and bass) and are complemented by cowbells, foghorns, and whistles. Each instrument contributes an independent line to the composite rhythm, and the performers are afforded a high degree of improvisatory freedom. Example 1 illustrates only the general roles fulfilled by the various instruments within the texture of the whole.

[Example 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The pattern played by the second bell players is known as Kalik and represents what, until recently, was the most common bell pattern. Since about 1976, junkanoo music has become faster, prompting the bell players to increase the intensity of their line, as well (see Ex. 1, Bells 1). The first and second drummers combine in any number of ways, although the first, or lead, drummers usually play a more complex line than that of the second drummers. The bass drummers carry the pulse of the music, and the most common rhythm is transcribed in this example. During the late 1970s, this rhythmic field is increasingly translated into popular music by way of a drum kit and additional percussion instruments.

I have not transcribed the lines that are customarily contributed by the whistles and foghorns, because these instruments seem to fulfill a timbral, rather than a rhythmic, role within popular junkanoo. In other words, they tend to function as aural markers of the festival event rather than as consistent rhythmic contributors. Although popular junkanoo draws its character from the rhythmic base of festival junkanoo, it relies on the distinctive timbral markers of the festival--the cowbells, whistles, and foghorns--to summon the power and timelessness of festival junkanoo. By conjuring the power of junkanoo in miniature, as it were, and making it part of a broader musical context, popular junkanoo appropriates the timeless quality of the festival while simultaneously rooting the sounds firmly in the present. The timelessness of festival junkanoo thus becomes a part of the present and immediate performance of popular junkanoo.

I believe that this distinction points to an interesting dialectic between the temporal functions of the two forms of junkanoo. Festival junkanoo inscribes national time and history through the performance and because of it, fashioning the event itself as a mythical and timeless activity. By doing so, festival junkanoo serves to create a sense of shared history and values, which in turn perpetuate and legitimize the existence of the state. If, as Herzfeld (1997, 21) observes, "The nation-state is ideologically committed to ontological self-perpetuation for all eternity," then festival junkanoo is a particularly useful tool toward that end. Popular junkanoo, however, colors the present by deliberately incorporating a timeless element within the performance. As a result of their new context, the timbral markers of timelessness serve to emphasize the presentness of the performance.

Popular junkanoo is an experiment in eclecticism, or perhaps it is a musically ecumenical style. The music generated from the festival base, including the timbral markers (cowbells, whistles, and foghorns), is intertwined with stylistic traits pulled from reggae, calypso, soca, rhythm and blues, funk, dub, rap, and pop. Having been influenced for so many years by musics from the United States and the larger Caribbean countries, Bahamian musicians sought to integrate their own music with some of these styles in order to create a new, appealing, and, most urgently, Bahamian popular music. As such, popular junkanoo constitutes a conscious appropriation of the musical styles that have historically encroached on Bahamian musical tastes. By pursuing this agenda and by incorporating and appropriating the very styles that once dominated the radio waves and Bahamian musicians themselves, artists such as Dr. Offfff and The Beginning of the End began to carve out a space in the transnational sphere, emerging as significant innovators in the Bahamas while simultaneously reclaiming Bahamian cultural agency and declaring its presence to the world. Following these developments, junkanoo artists often incorporate steel drums into their compositions, making this Trinidadian sound a part of their Bahamian expression.

A more wholesale appropriation is also becoming common among junkanoo artists, many of whom are covering American songs from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, "Bahamian Style."(7) These appropriations necessarily involve a reappraisal of national and individual identity, and Bahamian artists are clearly making conscious choices about what is and is not useful for representing Bahamian national identity. Junkanoo artists are in good company as they make these difficult choices. In her study of zouk, Jocelyne Guilbault (1993, 203) notes that "what is at stake here is not zouk [or junkanoo] in and for itself but the processes that it activates and, in connection with them, the difficulty of defining the `we' at the national level." The problem of the national "we" is addressed directly in the texts of junkanoo songs, and the following discussion investigates the various strategies employed by junkanoo artists.

The texts of popular junkanoo are rich with references to festival junkanoo. The musical connections to the festival music are strengthened and reinforced through the addition of textual references to sounds, activities, and sentiments associated with the festival, and some of these are quite explicit. For example, "Das Junkanoo" by Visage contains the following lyric: "And the drums start to play, and the cowbells ring, oh Lord, that's the sweetest feeling. / If you're losing control, `cause the rhythm's in your soul--Das Junkanoo!" (E.S.C. SCD-1290). This verse is typical of many popular junkanoo lyrics. It incorporates associative language and identifies the embodied nature of the event. Many artists refer to a "loss of control" or to an overwhelming sense of well-being upon hearing junkanoo music, emphasizing the emotive qualities of the music and clearly identifying the connection that Bahamians feel toward festival junkanoo.

In addition to such pointed references, bands occasionally incorporate more oblique references to festival junkanoo, references that necessitate at least some local knowledge of the event. As junkanoo groups rush down Bay Street during the competition, for example, they will often engage the crowd in short, call-and-response chants that identify the group while at the same time drawing spectators into an active, participatory role in the parade. The Roots junkanoo group, for example, chants "Roots! There it is!" while the Valley Boys group chants "Who are we? The Valley!" (see Ex. 2). Vivian Nina Michell Wood (1995, 354) notes that this type of chant is repeated "until the crowd has reached a frenzy, thus heightening the excitement of the parade." Drawing on this practice, the junkanoo band The Falcons has adopted the Valley Boys' chant, incorporating it into a song entitled "Go Down to Raysha": "Who are we? The Falcons!"

[Example 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The most significant function performed by textual references to festival junkanoo seems directly tied to the centrality of junkanoo within the Bahamian national imagination. By establishing a musical as well as textual link to the festival, artists, in effect, lay claim to the most powerful expression of nationalist sentiment, simultaneously legitimizing their music as an expression of the nation.

Popular junkanoo texts also refer to a wide variety of images and national themes in addition to festival junkanoo. Many lyrics are concerned with family, roots, homeland, "native" foods, and related tropes. For example, the song "Island Boy" stresses the sun, sea, and palmy beaches and calls for a return from the concrete walls of New York. As such, they mirror a trend found in Bahamian literature of the 1970s and 1980s. Anthony Dahl (1995, 123) has noted that, "We find in the overwhelming presence of themes relating to national culture such as Bahamian customs, foods, institutions, flora, fauna and people, symbols for the Bahamas as a space to belong to and be proud of, a space related to the archetypal motif of the Promised Land."

Dahl's "motif of the Promised Land" enjoys strong connections to the concept of the sacred journey, a concept that permeates many of the texts of popular junkanoo and is itself closely associated with the larger discourse focused around diaspora. In a novel titled Island Boy, Eric Minns (1981, 59) mentions an old Bahamian saying: "`Ya could take da man from out of de island, but ya cannot take de island out of da man.'"

Illustrative of this connection between expatriot Bahamians and the island, "Back to the Island," recorded by the Baha Men in 1994 (Big Beat 92394-2), reminiscing about the island to which they intend to return by afternoon boat, contains the following text: "Out in de field from dawn 'til dusk, / Swimmin' in de blue pool is a must. / Dat island where I was born, / First thing I'll do is grow some corn." Some of the images invoked by such song texts are readily understood as a physical return. However, the nature of the activities listed in the narrator's itinerary, such as staying in the field from dawn to dusk and growing corn, offer insight into the narrator's agenda. These activities are interesting not because they refer to farming (farming is no longer a part of everyday life in the Bahamas), but because they suggest a diasporic journey involving both a literal and a more figurative (temporal) return. This idea of a temporal return can be linked to the "stay in the bush" movement of the late 1970s, a movement that sought the essence of Bahamian culture in an idealized past.

Many junkanoo texts are at least binary in nature. On the one hand, they clearly write diaspora in terms of physical space. Home and away are thus easily defined in geographic relation to one another. On the other hand, the texts simultaneously write diaspora as temporal space. In other words, the lyrics also narrate a return through time to the true homeland. In this temporal diasporic language, home and away may be located in the same geographic space. Thus, many of these texts narrate a spatial return to the homeland (in the present), while also imagining the true homeland as located in the mythical past. It is in this sense that the myth of return comes into play. Or, to pose this as a question, is it possible to return when that journey necessitates returning to a "when" instead of a "where"?

Among the locations mentioned in "Back to the Island" as places to which the singer must return in the Bahamas are Nassau, Eleuthra, Cat Island, Rum Key, Exuma, Freeport, Mayaguana, Long Island, Acklins, and Inagua. The reference to a physical return is clear here, but the text's implicit connection to the temporal diaspora is significant.

Geographically, the narrator is equally "at home" in the Bahamas no matter on which island he happens to be. Thus, the distinction made between the islands has more to do with temporal perception. Nassau, the capital city on New Providence, is considered to be just that--a city. The images associated with urban life, however, do not match the idyllic and mythologized conception of Bahamian culture. But this is how the other islands in the narrator's list are perceived: they are considered to be truer to the cultural heritage of the Bahamas than is Nassau. Thus, while returning home to Nassau would be sufficient to satisfy the geographic journey home, in order to satisfy the demands of a temporal return from diaspora, the narrator needs to complete a journey to one of the other islands listed in his text.

In another song, the Baha Men begin to trace a geography of the Bahamian diaspora: "Gin and coconut water, gin and coconut water, gin and coconut water, / cannot get it in America. / Honey child come go with me, back to the West Indies."(8) The journey home is defined in relation to a specific diasporic location, namely America, and the text points to the negative aspects of diasporic existence. It also sheds light on the general patterns of diaspora in the Bahamas.

Historically, Bahamians have left their homeland for two primary reasons. First, economic conditions have led families to seek employment in the United States. According to Howard Johnson (1996, 151), there have been three major waves of these labor migrations: "The first of these was the migration to Key West, which lasted from 1870 into the first decade of the twentieth century. This outward movement was succeeded by (and overlapped with) the `Miami Craze,' which lasted from 1905 to 1924." A final period of migration to the United States occurred from 1943 to 1966 in direct response to short-term government labor contracts. Second, educational goals have led young Bahamians to enroll in colleges and universities, first in England and more recently in the United States. Once Bahamians achieve residency in these countries, employment opportunities or marriage sometimes leads them to long stays abroad.

It is clear that migration has deeply affected Bahamian families throughout the years, and that "family" continues to act as a significant metaphor for national unity. This is explicitly stated in the name and parade chant of the junkanoo group called One Family. As they parade down Bay Street, they chant "All a we is one family, all a we is one!" Ira Storr's junkanoo song entitled "Bread and Butter," from the album of the same name, concerns itself with a father's love of and provision for his family:

   I'm a hard-workin' man, seven days a week.
   I give my family everything to keep them out of the street.
   Monday through Sunday, I put food on me table.
   I give my children dem lunch-money and book to learn dey
   time-table.

These examples illustrate Anthony Dahl's (1995, 29) remark that "sociologically, `family,' as a metaphor for Bahamian national unity, was close at hand due to its use in the Bahamian black experience as a protective unit for survival, nurturing and growth under oppression." In this respect, I suggest that the concept of family is intimately connected to the concept of country, as illustrated in Sweet Emily's song entitled "Come Back Home" (Sweetheart QJ CD 6786-2):

   To keep our values above the rest,
   We need the service of all the best.
   The time is right now for all to know,
   Forsake all others and come back home.

This song seems to have its literary corollary in the novel Island Boy (Minns 1981), the story of John Williams, a Bahamian living and working in Toronto, who, upon hearing of his mother's illness, travels back to the Bahamas. Once there, he becomes completely attached to his "motherland," and, even though his mother eventually dies, he decides to stay in the Bahamas. In so doing, he leaves a girlfriend and many friends behind in Toronto. The novel also narrates the diasporic journey in a very real sense through the narrator telling the story from three different places: from his apartment in Toronto, from an airplane en route to the Bahamas, and from various locations in the Bahamas. The ideas of country as family and as a natural place of belonging mirror Sweet Emily's lyrics and perpetuate this metaphorical extension of kinship within nationalist discourse.

In addition to these applications, the family can be employed metaphorically and physically to support the concept of a temporal diaspora, as illustrated in "Home Sweet Home" by the Baha Men (Big Beat 92190-2): "I still remember my grandpapee when he say, / `Ain't no place like home, my boy.'" The succeeding verse speaks of the singer's worldwide travels and his gratitude to his mother for bringing him to "dis town."

Families are inherently multigenerational, incorporating both old and young members, and this generational structure can be helpful in bridging the conceptual distance between geographic and temporal diasporas. The physical return inscribed here is readily apparent. What is more interesting is the role that the grandfather fulfills. The grandfather, temporally separated from the narrator by two generations, has or had intimate and much longer experience of the Bahamas than the narrator. The grandfather also stresses to the narrator that there is "no place like home." The narrator, who has traveled far and wide, has come to be in full agreement with his grandfather, actually restating this sentiment and making it his own in the process of thanking his mother. As such, the narrator reenacts a scenario not unlike that of the biblical prodigal son, first "going astray" and ultimately coming back home, a scenario that could, by extension, include the entire Bahamian nation. In light of this narrative, I suggest that the obvious respect given to the older generations seems related to the fact that they are perceived to be more connected to Bahamian culture as a result of their long and continuous participation in it. Thus, the multigenerationality of the family serves to bridge the conceptual distance between physical and temporal diasporas.

Another prevalent theme in popular junkanoo is the sacred or, when tied to diaspora, the sacred journey. For example, the liner notes of the Baha Men's album begin with the following statement: "The Baha Men would like to say special thanks to God: The master creator and composer of the greatest piece of music ever written--life" (Baha Men 1992). From the very deliberate homage paid to the artists who have "paved the way" to the utopian idealization of return embedded in the texts under discussion, junkanoo artists construct a "religious" context within which the concept of diaspora takes on a spiritual dimension. Some texts connect home with personal "salvation," creating a vivid and powerful image and, by extension, introducing eternity into the temporal equation. Here, we get a glimpse of the possible consequences of rejecting home. They are, in effect, eternal consequences, as shown, for example, in the lyric of "Salvation" by the Baha Men (Mercury 314 558 398-2): "I'm feeling far away from you and I don't know what I'm gonna do. / And when I think of home I scream.... / Salvation! Morning will come, take a walk in the sunshine. / Salvation! Morning will come, it will be your salvation!"

These sacred overtones lend greater moral authority to the texts and, by extension, also demand from the audience the same devotion that is being expressed by the band. This spiritualization of the material is unifying at its core; it has the effect of constructing an inclusive sense of the nation by uncoupling diaspora from geographic location, thereby including every Bahamian, no matter where that individual may actually be located. In this sense, the concept of the sacred journey provides a strong rallying point for the nationalist ideals of postindependence Bahamians.

Popular junkanoo, then, reaches beyond the nation in order to find national identity. It is not spatially fixed and is located in the present as well as in the past. Both texts and music identify the timelessness of festival junkanoo but incorporate it into the structure of the music, making it a part of their immediate expression. The texts that invoke the idea of a temporal diaspora seem to engage in what Herzfeld (1997, 22) has called structural nostalgia, that sense of "longing for an age before the state, for the primordial and self-regulating birthright that the state continually invokes." As such, the texts fulfill a function similar to the activities of the scrap groups, reinserting analysis and criticism into the discourse of the nation. As a result, the functions of popular junkanoo provide a marked contrast to the functions of festival junkanoo.

This admittedly brief discussion of the two forms of junkanoo has begun to illustrate the multiple ways in which junkanoo offers experiences of the body (music), time (nationalism), and sociability (community). These have been explored through Herzfeld's model of cultural intimacy as well as through musical and textual analysis. In the concluding portion of this article, I explore some of the spaces between the ways that the two forms of junkanoo represent the nation and suggest a theoretical perspective that views these "spaces between" as the most important product of their relationship.

It is interesting to note that both the festival-related and popular forms of junkanoo earned and continue to develop their cultural currency among Bahamians in direct dependence on outside articulations of their value. Festival junkanoo, for example, was heavily influenced by tourism. In fact, it is doubtful whether junkanoo would be enjoying its central position in the Bahamian national imagination if it had not been for the external pressure that the tourist trade applied to the economic and political sectors of Bahamian society.

An additional factor in the transformation of junkanoo in the public sphere is the mechanism of cultural intimacy. After all, prior to Prime Minister Pindling's success as a participant in the festivities, junkanoo had been if not severely stigmatized, at least underappreciated, by the powerful white minority. Junkanoo continues to be promoted as a central culturalism of the Bahamas. It is the international face of the Bahamas--the face that the government and the people want the world to associate with the Bahamas. Thus, artistic representations of junkanoo, miniature costumes, coffee table books, and other iconographic representations of the festival all serve to reinforce this international image and to configure public opinion in ways that supersede language.

Similarly, popular junkanoo was not given much attention until the first popular junkanoo band achieved international success in 1992. The Baha Men was the first band to receive an international recording contract, and its debut album became a smash hit in the Bahamas, in large part because this was the first recognition by the international music community. Since that time, popular junkanoo has enjoyed a modest public interest in the Bahamas, but artists without international acclaim still struggle for recognition.(9) In many respects, this pattern of dependence on external approval, of looking outward in order to define the value of that which is an expression of self, mirrors the cycle established in other Caribbean countries. The international rumba craze, which transformed the musical landscape within Cuba, is only the most obvious example (see Moore 1997). Another excellent example of this pattern is illustrated in the meteoric rise of zouk in international world music markets and the utter dependence of Antillean artists on the resources of the French recording companies and international consumers.

According to Tinkle Hanna (1999b), "It's easy to get funding for the arts in the Bahamas. But what people mean by the arts is European-centered art, not folk or popular art. Bahamians still do not consider their own art and music worthy of study and don't pay much attention to it unless it achieves international success." Both types of junkanoo exist within a similar cycle, involving movement beyond the borders of the nation in order to gain approval within the nation. It should be noted, however, that festival junkanoo satisfies this requirement through the tourist trade, thus staying at home, while popular junkanoo is much more evangelistic in its quest for recognition.

This is, in fact, a significant point of difference between the two musics. Whereas festival junkanoo is a musical event that effectively collapses the nation into itself in the heart of Nassau, popular junkanoo deliberately incorporates musical styles from other parts of the world, actively narrates diaspora, and generally thrusts the concept of nation beyond physical borders. Comments about the mission of popular junkanoo in the international community abound. One of many examples comes from the liner notes of Best of the Best, Vol. 1 (1999): "Together as a united force, we are taking Bahamian music to another level. Our unique junkanoo sound is more than just music, it's a part of our Bahamian culture--once experienced never forgotten." Another example reads, "To our country, our goal is to take this music called junkanoo and give every ear a chance to hear it" (Baha Men 1998). This transnational music, with its transnational listenership, provides a counternarrative to the boundedness of festival junkanoo, which is illustrated by a closer examination of the implications of the diasporic theme that runs through its texts.

The junkanoo texts cited earlier in this article have illustrated their multidimensionality. They refer both to a geographic diaspora and to a temporal diaspora, to inward and outward conceptions of the nation. The initial motivation for investigating the possibilities of multiple dimensions in these texts was provided by W.E.B. Du Bois' articulation of double consciousness. Paul Gilroy (1993, 126) discusses Du Bois' ideas in his book The Black Atlantic, arguing that:

   Double consciousness was initially used to convey the special difficulties
   arising from black internalisation of an American identity: "One ever feels
   his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
   unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged
   strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." However, I want to
   suggest that Du Bois produced this concept ... not just to express the
   distinctive standpoint of black Americans but also to illuminate the
   experience of post-slave populations in general.

This twoness seems evident in the struggles of the Bahamian people, as well. They fight to contain a vision of themselves as Bahamians (through junkanoo, for example) and, at the same time, seek to reconcile that vision to their position between the United States and the rest of the Caribbean. The strong, postindependence nationalist focus of the country, as exemplified in the two forms of junkanoo that have been promoted as culturalisms, is a means through which Bahamians are learning how to live with and talk about this twoness, or this "betweenness."

The lyrics of the songs under discussion here exhibit the slippery twoness of double consciousness in several ways. By positing two levels or types of diaspora, the narrators of these songs imply that an individual can be home in one diasporic sense but not home in the other. This interplay between geographic and temporal space seems to parallel the struggle between the two Bahamian identities in relation to the world. In addition, by thinking about time in two different ways--one historicized and mythical, the other radically present--Bahamians address the paradox of this double consciousness every time they hear or perform junkanoo. One more thought by Gilroy is appropriate here:

   Regardless of their affiliation to the right, left, or centre, groups have
   fallen back on the idea of cultural nationalism, on the overintegrated
   conceptions of culture which present immutable, ethnic differences as an
   absolute break in the histories and experiences of "black" and "white"
   people [or "Bahamian" and "other" people]. Against this choice stands
   another, more difficult option: the theorisation of creolisation. (2)(10)

The music and texts of popular junkanoo are intriguing because they appear to engage with both national and transnational ideas simultaneously. The texts themselves are clearly engaged in nationalist idealization of the Bahamas through diasporic narratives. Yet, by extension, they also recognize the reality of Bahamian existence in the world. The fact is that many Bahamians live in countries other than the Bahamas. The music, as has been pointed out already, is clearly transnational in character, drawing on many musical genres and sounds and blending them into a musical statement that the bands, nevertheless, identify as junkanoo.

A final observation concerns the ways in which the two junkanoo musics deal with history, the temporal diaspora. Festival junkanoo, it seems, operates within an agenda of forgetting, within the unity constructed through cultural intimacy. Those aspects of history that are seen as embarrassing are used to unify the nation, while they simultaneously are written out of history. Wood (1995, 226) recalls an interview during which Tinkle Hanna warned that the topic of class and race relations is "extremely controversial and that no junkanooer would acknowledge that there are class distinctions in junkanoo." Nevertheless, Wood goes on to identify several areas of inequality within the music. It seems that history and the present are subjected to a policy of forgetting within the unifying and nationalizing project of festival junkanoo. This approach is contested by popular junkanoo, a music that appears to be more concerned with remembering, albeit within a very specific realm of the Bahamian past. The consistent identification of cultural practices of yesteryear and their incorporation into a nationalist discourse point to the deliberate imagining of the past--to structural nostalgia. The emphasis on family, on the "good old days," on foods and smells and feelings, all focus attention on aspects of Bahamian history that are desirable. Thus, both of these musics contribute to the national project but through opposing but interrelated mechanisms of memory. One forgets the undesirable, the other remembers only that which is useful.

In conclusion, I have suggested that the two types of junkanoo perform two separate but overlapping and interconnected functions in the Bahamian national imagination. On one hand, festival junkanoo provides a centering and unifying event that facilitates state and local interaction and promotes a sense of quintessential Bahamianness. On the other hand, popular junkanoo provides an increasingly important link with the transnational. The rhetoric of national unity surrounding festival junkanoo is paralleled by a conscious and deliberate transnational narrative in popular junkanoo that, although saturated with diasporic themes, ultimately demonstrates that the nation is conceived as a complex body of relationships that far outreaches any physical boundaries. The rhetoric of purity and authenticity that heralds festival junkanoo as a truly Bahamian art runs alongside the premeditated musical eclecticism of popular junkanoo. Even the texts of popular junkanoo incorporate multiple dimensions of meaning, referring both to a geographic and a temporal diaspora. Festival junkanoo imagines the nation by forgetting, while popular junkanoo remembers only those events and customs that prove useful to the national project.

Each music, moreover, is considered a representation of the national, and each powerfully imagines the spaces inhabited by the nation. But one would be incomplete without the other. It is for this reason that the spaces between the two forms of junkanoo, the spaces of paradoxical twoness, of mythical and present history, of the national and the transnational, and of people and state, figure as a most fruitful terrain for a balanced and critical approach to the nation. Study of these forms of junkanoo can contribute to a tentative understanding of how the state and the local, as well as the transnational and the national, are brought into play in addressing the challenges of nationhood after colonialism.

"Ain't no place like home, my boy."

(1.) Although Herzfeld's model of cultural intimacy is grounded in case studies from Greece and is, therefore, elaborated in the context of quite different, European, nationalisms, Herzfeld uses this model to explore the tensions that exist in the spaces between official articulations of national identity and the experiences of ordinary citizens. Cultural intimacy is an ongoing process through which the paradoxes and complexities of collective representation and self-recognition are negotiated in the modern nation-state. I believe that his model provides an excellent point of entry into the dilemmas currently facing the Bahamas and translates particularly well to the musical interactions surrounding junkanoo.

(2.) These figures are based on information obtained through using 1980 government census statistics in combination with estimated population growth statistics for the period between 1980 and 1990 (Ministry of Education and Culture 1993).

(3.) For more detailed information regarding the origins of junkanoo, its appearance in other areas such as North Carolina and Jamaica, and its possible connections with mummery, see Reid (1942) and Ping (1980).

(4.) For more information about the development of the early steelband in Trinidad and Tobago, see Stuempfle (1995).

(5.) For example, the Street Nuisance Act of 1899, which included injunctions against junkanoo between the hours of 4 A.M. and 9 A.M. on the celebration days, or the ban on all forms of public assembly following the Burma Road Riot of 1942.

(6.) Stuempfle's (1995) account of the effect of sponsorship on the steelband ties in well with the developments that took place in junkanoo. For a copy of the competition rules, see Wood (1995, app. F).

(7.) An entire album of these cover songs, titled Golden Oldies Bahamian Style, Vol. 1 was released by Geno D in 1998.

(8.) "Gin and Coconut Water (Jelly)" (Big Beat 92190-2).

(9.) This reliance on larger, transnational recording companies with access to international markets parallels the situation confronting Haitian artists as described in Averill (1997) and Guilbault (1993).

(10.) While Gilroy suggests the theorization of creolization as an alternative to the challenges posed by cultural nationalism, it is possible, in the case of the Bahamas, to consider the practice of transnationalism as an additional alternative--an alternative that seems to have been adopted freely by the artists of popular junkanoo.

DISCOGRAPHY 

Baha Men. Doong spank. Mercury 314 558 398-2 (1998). Compact disc.

--. I like what I like. Mercury 314 534 912-2 (1997). Compact disc.

--. Kalik. Big Beat 92394-2 (1994). Compact disc.

--. Junkanoo! Big Beat 92190-2 (1992). Compact disc.

Best of the best, vol. 1. E.S.C. SCD-1290 (1999). Compact disc.

Butler, Ronnie. Junk-a-blue at the Johnny Canoe. Freddie's Place 003. Compact disc.

Geno D. Golden oldies Bahamian style, vol. 1. E. Davis & Funkman [n.n.] (1998). Compact disc.

Hit songs of the Bahamas. G.B.I. CD 113-2 (1997). Compact disc.

Minnis, Eddie. Greatest Hits! Pot Luck Enterprises EM 010 (1996). Compact disc.

Munnings, Freddie, Sr. Songs of the Bahamas. Munnings Music FM 174 (1994). Compact disc.

Over 30 years of Bahamian music. G.B.I. CD GBI-245 (1996). Compact disc.

Penn, Frank. Stay in the bush. Reissued on Over 30 years of Bahamian music. G.B.I. CD GBI-245 ([1978] 1996).

Roots. Jubilee. PRS D1002 (1998). Compact disc.

Storr, Ira. Bread and butter. Entertainers and Stars CD STAR 284 (1996). Compact disc.

Sweet Emily. Queen of junkanoo. Sweetheart Records QJ CD 6786-2 (1998). Compact disc.

The real Bahamas. Nonesuch Explorer Series 79300-2 (1998). Compact disc.

REFERENCES

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Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Averill, Gage. 1997. A day for the hunter, a day for the prey: Popular music and power in Haiti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baha Men. 1992. Liner notes, Junkanoo! Big Beat 92190-2.

--. 1998. Liner notes, Doong Spank. Mecury 314 558 398-2.

Boyarin, Jonathan. 1994. Space, time, and politics of memory. In Remapping memory: The politics of time space, edited by Jonthan Boyarin, 1-27. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

The Cabinet Office [Nassau, Bahamas]. 1972. Independence for the Commonwealth of the Bahamas: Presented to the Parliament by the Prime Minister, 18th October 1972. Nassau: Cabinet Office.

Dahl, Anthony G. 1995. Literature of the Bahamas 1724-1992: The march towards national identity. New York: University Press of America.

Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Guilbault, Jocelyne. 1993. Zouk: World music in the West Indies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hall, Catherine. 1996. Histories, empires and the post-colonial moment. In The post-colonial question: Common skies, divided horizons, edited by Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, 65-77. New York: Routledge.

Hall, Stuart, and Paul du Gay, eds. 1996. Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage Publications.

Hanna, Tinkle. 1997. Interview with the author. Nassau, Bahamas, December 11.

--. 1999a. Interview with the author. Nassau, Bahamas, February 19.

--. 1999b. Interview with the author. Nassau, Bahamas, February 20.

Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational connections: Culture, people, places. New York: Routledge.

Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Cultural intimacy: Social poetics in the nation-state. New York: Routledge.

Johnson, Howard. 1996. The Bahamas from slavery to servitude, 1783-1933. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Ministry of Education and Culture. 1993. Important facts to know about the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. 2nd ed. Nassau: Department of Archives.

Minns, Eric. 1981. Island boy. Nassau: Loric.

Moore, Robin D. 1997. Nationalizing blackness: Afrocubanismo and artistic revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Nettleford, Rex. 1993. Inward stretch outward reach: A voice for the Caribbean. London: Macmillan.

Ping, Nancy R. 1980. Black musical activities in antebellum Wilmington, North Carolina. Black Perspective in Music 8, no. 2: 139-160.

Rahming, Patrick A. 1989. Attention: Junkanoo belongs to Bahamians. Nassau Guardian (October 16): 2A, 3A.

--. 1992. Naive agenda: Social and political issues for the Bahamas through the eyes of a dreamer. Nassau: Superior Printing Services.

Reid, Ira de A. 1942. The John Canoe festival: A New World Africanism. Phylon 3, no. 4:349-370.

Sands, Rosita M. 1989. Conversation with Maureen "Bahama Mama" DuValier and Ronald Simms: Junkanoo past, present, and future. Black Perspective in Music 17, no. 1/2: 93-108.

-- 1991. Carnival celebrations in Africa and the New World: Junkanoo and the black Indians of Mardi Gras. Black Music Research Journal 11, no. 1: 75-92.

Stuempfle, Stephen. 1995. The steelband movement: The forging of a national art in Trinidad and Tobago. Phildelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wood, Vivian Nina Michell. 1995. Rushin' hard and runnin' hot: Experiencing the music of the Junkanoo parade in Nassau, Bahamas. Ph.D. diss., Indiana University.

TIMOTHY ROMMEN is a doctoral student in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago. His research interests include folk and popular sacred music of Trinidad and Tobago, popular music, music in the African Diaspora, and the intellectual history of ethnomusicology.