There came a time when the only remaining Westerners rushing were Adrian and me. I continued to rush scrap with him even after I had joined with One Family. Once it was just me rushing by myself, I realised that to continue I would be maintaining a tradition simply for the sake of the tradition and not because what the tradition represented was still alive in what I was doing.
What I mean is this. For me, junkanoo especially old-time or scrap junkanoo is a group thing. Yes you had your individual participants, but for me rushing was all about making music, celebrating together as a group. Yes I hoped that the Bay st and Shirley St crowds would enjoy it as well, but most importantly we were rushing and playing for one another. It’s quite a unique feeling, rushing scrap. This is why I’m of two minds about the the way Sting or even the Pigs before them have a band or prerecorded music playing over loud speakers at the head of the group. All of this is aside from the purist arguments about electric guitar an ting don belong in junkanoo. I don’t know that I want to go down that road. My concern more is whether all of that electric music is for the junkanoos or for the crowd. Maybe it was a little of both. I do remember that when Visage played with the Pigs, it helped that Dr Offfff was right there with us beating his drum. It felt like we were all playing together. I’m not so sure how it is now, but it looks a little like the junkanoos may be more like the backup singers these days than the main attraction.
Anyway, the group was always the Westerners, not the Westerner. Alone, I was trying to keep alive a tradition that was already dead. Maybe we could have done more to encourage it – there was a time there when the group was growing. We had managed to recruit so many of our friends that we were actually a small group ourselves – we didn’t really have to join up with anyone if we didn’t want to. It was always a little challenging with only two drums, but it was to the point that Mark had started to come out with us again. But as different people moved away the numbers dwindled back down to just Adrian and me, then just me.
After joining One Family, I always wondered how the One Family crew, especially Jackson and Stan and ANF and Silbert, used to think about me rushing scrap one parade. I mean, here were people who had dedicated the latter parts of their lives to developing and refining the visual art of junkanoo. How could they, immersed as they were in one form, one genre, of junkanoo, even recognise that other forms of junkanoo might exist and were also valid. I say this because this is a question I asked of myself. If you are rushing scrap that’s what you are, that’s what you’re committed to; similarly for organized junkanoo. The other types of junkanoo exist only as something external and distant, something way out there, if at all. This perplexed me (though I never asked them) as they all seemed deeply committed to the ethos of junkanoo as a parade for ourselves, for the junkanoos, rather than for others; an opportunity, once a year for us to take back the streets for ourselves. For me scrap junkanoo is in many ways a more complete embodiment of that junkanoo ethos than anything else.
Junkanoo has become something else – I’m not sure what. That’s not a value judgement. Rather it’s a way of saying that the junkanoo of now is truly something new. Yes it’s a time for us to take back Bay St, but I’m not sure what that means anymore. Given the status junkanoo is accorded in Bahamian society, it no longer seems that Junkanoo is taking back Bay St. It seems more that these days Junkanoo is a year-round, full time, legitimate, no, honored resident of Bay st. There is scarcely a storefront or office downtown that does not make at least the smallest of references to junkanoo, be it through a painting, an old costume piece, junkanoo instruments, junkanoo inspired decor.
Junkanoo, or at least organized junkanoo, is the status quo. It is the scrap groups who for those two early mornings reclaim Bay St for themselves, to celebrate and make music togeter.
(more to come)
