Unmasking Junkanoo.

• Author: Potter, Everett
• Position: Bahamas festival

RIO DE JANEIRO may have its Carnival, and New Orleans its Mardi Gras, but in the Bahamas, there is Junkanoo, a pulsating festival that erupts on two days each year--Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year's Day. Tradition has decreed that the festival take place on these two days, with so-called normal life in between. But if you attend the first Junkanoo parade, you might well imagine that the revelers need five full days to recover and recharge their physical and spritual energies.

Junkanoo is second to none when it comes to hypnotic music and frenetic dancing, with marchers attired in wildly colorful papier mache costumes. A people's festival in the true sense of the word, Junkanoo has been celebrated for centuries in small towns on what the tourism officials now call the "Family Islands." On these Out Islands of the Bahamas--places like Eleuthera and Andros--tourism is minimal and the traditional Bahamian lifestyle and customs have been retained.

Yet paradoxically, one finds the largest and most exciting Junkanoo celebration of all in Nassau, the capital city on the island of New Providence. In this crowded tourist mecca, chockablock with high-rise hotels, narrow streets are filled with visitors newly debarked from the cruise ships that call with clockwork regularity throughout the year. Nassau boasts the largest straw market in the islands and on Bay Street, the main drag, dozens of merchants sell Rolex watches and Chanel perfumes to tourists. Yet despite this commercialization, the Bahamian spirit thrives. For two days a year, the island people return to their roots with a festival that marks them as nationals and celebrates their uniqueness in the Americas.

Although often compared to Rio's carnival, Junkanoo more closely resembles the Brazilian festival of Iemanja. Not only do both take place on New Year's day, but both are steeped in tribal traditions. In Rio, thousands of workshippers make offerings to the sea goddess Iemanja at the water's edge. It is a powerful, emotional rite, and it is followed in true Brazilian style by a considerably more secular fireworks display.

Junkanoo's origins are less obviously religious. An African-derived celebration, it harkens back to the early colonial history of the Bahamas when slavery was a way of life. Slaves were expected to work throughout the year including Christmas Day. In compensation they were "free" on both Boxing and New Year's Day. The slaves used these days not to rest but to...