page_title: Junkanoo
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Junkanoo / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Junkanoo 'off the shoulder' dancer costume
context_page_description: Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance, and costumes of mixed African origin in many islands across the English speaking Caribbean every Boxing Day and New Year's Day. These cultural parades are predominantly showcased in the Bahamas where the music is also mainstreamed. There are also Junkanoo parades in Miami in June and Key West in October, where local black populations have their roots in the Caribbean. In addition to being a culture dance for Afro-North Carolinians and the Garifuna people, this type of dancing is also performed in The Bahamas on Independence day and other historical holidays.
  Dances are choreographed to the beat of goatskin drums and cowbells.
context_section_description: Many of the colonies Jonkonnu was prominent, Bahamas, Jamaica (as Jankunu), Virginia celebrated Jonkonnu.
  Historian Stephen Nissenbaum described the festival as it was performed in 19th-century North Carolina: 
  Essentially, it involved a band of black men—generally young—who dressed themselves in ornate and often bizarre costumes. Each band was led by a man who was variously dressed in animal horns, elaborate rags, female disguise, whiteface (and wearing a gentleman's wig!), or simply his "Sunday-go-to-meeting-suit." Accompanied by music, the band marched along the roads from plantation to plantation, town to town, accosting whites along the way and sometimes even entering their houses. In the process the men performed elaborate and (to white observers) grotesque dances that were probably of African origin. And in return for this performance they always demanded money (the leader generally carried "a small bowl or tin cup" for this purpose), though whiskey was an acceptable substitute.
caption: Example of Junkanoo costume December 2007
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