We talk 'bout the dance, and the music that causes the dance to be so sweet. We talk 'bout the Church and the Bar and how they too add colour and flavor to the pepperpot. We talk 'bout the conch salad and all the foods and all of the people that spice up this small space...! Our Backyard, Our canvas upon which we must make a special and sweet mark... if only for our own enjoyment.
So we talk.

John Beadle, 2002.
Doongalik Studios,
Nassau, Bahamas

It was not a planned trip. It was not an anticipated trip. In fact, it was a feared trip due to my father’s hospitalization from sudden heart failure. It was mid August and I was going to Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, for the first time. An hour’s flight from Miami lay one of the 700 Bahamian islands where the local and the US dollar are worth the same. Though I could easily write about the hospital care (just in case you needed it sometime on a cruise there) it seems more appropriate to write about the magnetic things that bring you to this paradise in search of the party embedded in Nassau’s everyday culture.

Traveling to the hospital/town/beach on the $1 buses which drive one tenth the speed of those in Trinidad and Guyana with the music level to match, the scenery of funky fence paintings on the perimeter of Doongalik Studios undeniably stood out. My curiosity led me into a beautifully renovated gallery where small children sat with fingers covering their smiles and giggles. They had just finished a tour of the Doongalik art gallery which showcases the paintings of Stan and Jackson Burnside and John Beadle. Although these 3 featured artists were trained at different universities in the states and they each display a unique approach to the medium of painting, they paint together, in unison on canvas and wood. And they’ve been painting together in this manner since 1994. According to John Beadle, whose painted furniture is also on display,

“The work that we have done, as a group, has been centered around the celebration of us as people in the environment that is the Bahamas. With the use of colour, texture, movement and images that talks about the peopled environment, our work starts to talk 'bout our backyard in a manner that shows some of the spirit and feel that make this space special. We talk 'bout the dance, and the music that causes the dance to be so sweet. We talk 'bout the Church and the Bar and how they too add colour and flavor to the pepperpot. We talk 'bout the conch salad and all the foods and all of the people that spice up this small space...! Our Backyard, Our canvas upon which we must make a special and sweet mark... if only for our own enjoyment.”

In an adjacent building lit with dim lights and great cardboard creations that greet you behind the doors, you find yourself engulfed in the world of, “The Junkanoo Studio”. It’s cool and quiet and filled with cowbells, cardboard and color. From unfinished costumes to elaborately decorated and painted faces and bodies this small room evokes a spirit of the Bahamian “Junkanoo”-their equivalent to Carnival. Held annually during the Christmas season, the Junkanoo spirit spills into the street as a parade bursting with live bands, costumes, drums and associated dances. The display of this celebration of Bahamian culture is yet another cousin of culture commonly shared among her sister Caribbean islands. This year, Junkanoo will occur on December 26th and January 1st, starting at 1 am and continuing until 6 am.

The neatly maintained gardens on the Doongalik property are home to many native plants, labeled for your education. There’s even a pool to do some laps and a gift shop where you can see live video of previous Junkanoo celebrations, buy children’s coloring books, and other pieces of art. If you want a piece of Junkanoo for yourself, Doongalik also publishes an array of books for sale filled with pictures and a description of the festival and its spirit (e.g. Come To Get Me, An inside look at the Junkanoo festival by Arlene Nash Ferguson).

Before this trip I had no clue that those beautiful conch shells that decorate people’s houses or that you know were used as a whistle by fishermen also supplied Bahamians with their national dish, proclaimed aphrodisiac….conch, as a salad, scorched, or fried. The street side stalls located “under the bridge” that connects Nassau with Paradise Island (home of Atlantis, a Vegas style hotel rumored to rent a room to Michael Jackson for $25K/night, and being visited at the time by Vanessa Williams and Bahamian born Rick Fox of the LA Lakers) offered some of the best conch salad and collection of local fruit. Some advise that this salad, consisting of raw conch, tomatoes, green onions, lime, vinegar, onions and more, should be eaten in limited amounts because of the tendency of the animal, like most shell fish, to accumulate toxins. Before I had time to check on the water quality in the Bahamas I was consuming on the order of one conch salad and a Kalik beer per day. I had some of the best food at ‘The Poop Deck’ and ‘The Twin Brothers Restaurant and Bar’ at Fish Fry.

Fish Fry is similar to ‘Oistins Fish Market’ in Barbados, where you find an open air liming spot with bars and restaurants lining the street that borders a small patch of green. Sunday nights are the big reggae nights. Sound systems blare music until midnight while Bahamians and a few tourists, young and old, parade up and down and dance in the open. As you play pool and watch the sun set at the back of “Sweet Jimmy’s” or dance to the “Hotel California” in a small blues bar, you’ll wish you never had to leave. Actually, you’d feel the same way if you were sitting an a beach sipping on a Mai Tai (Nassau Beach) just before getting a jet ski ride over to Fish Fry or swimming in the warm water with not a soul in sight at remote beaches that begin just after you pass Lyford Cays (a gated community where the rich and famous like Sean Connery park their million dollar yachts and hibernate for the winter). In contrast to the wealth displayed by Lyford Cays’ mainly non-Bahamian community, you must drive through handcut paths strewn with trash to get to the desolate beaches. Overgrowth also occupies the brick remnants of slave quarters, some barely as big as my tour guide’s land cruiser. Just a bit further along the coast lies another landmark, the actual stairs that led blacks from the middle passage to plantation life in the Caribbean. These stairs are now home to a sea that’s well traveled by oil tankers that offload right in that quay.

Having flown from California I kept searching for soca and reggae in the nightclubs, but actually had to log on to the Treasure Mix internet radio (wenetradio.com) for my fix one Saturday afternoon. This was after seeing Bahamas’ premier soca band, Visage perform at Club 601, their usual Friday night gig where a flash of your foreign ID or a coupon from a taxi driver gets you in for half price. This was also after wining down at “Big Daddy’s” under the bridge where you party on the water, just beneath the many cruise ships. The tourists though, miss this local spot and head for places like Bahama Boom to trip out on house music whilst the more uppity Bahamian crowd frequents the “Living Room” in Nassau beach to groove to R&B and urban soul. This was just one of the many Bahamian islands during the “off-season” at a time when my dad’s condition did not put me in the best party mood. I am sure one day I’ll return to experience Junkanoo, maybe it’ll be a jouvay.com Bahamian getaway!!

Image taken from a Burnside Burnside and Beadle postcard. Doongalik Studios (18 Village Road, Nassau, Bahamas; (242) 394-1886 )
Visage Band (CD: Brigga-dum Bram!, opindling@hotmail.com).

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