By IPS Correspondents
MONTEGO BAY, Dec 17 2002 (IPS)

Neville Gordon still laughs when he remembers the first time he saw a Jonkunnu parade nearly 40 years ago in his community of Grange Hill, Westmoreland.

"This thing was coming, it was the first time I experienced this jonkunnu, from me take a glimpse, me no want to see any more, is move me move,” said Gordon, 47.

Years later, as a minibus operator transporting the local Jonkunnu group, he realised that the members were struggling financially and organisationally, and decided to get involved.

At full strength, the Grange Hill group includes 32 members, but it currently operates with 18 players, ranging in age from 14 to 77 years of age.

Years ago, almost every community would have had a Jonkunnu group, but the Grange Hill Jonkunnu is now one of the few remaining authentic groups in Jamaica, a fact in which Gordon takes great pride.

”My group is what you’d call the old-fashioned Jonkunnu,” he says. ”It’s not like when I come to (the capital) Kingston and see some of them makeshift Jonkunnu.”

Jonkunnu, also sometimes called John Canoe or Junkanoo, is a colourful centuries-old street festival of African origin that began during slavery.

Encompassing dance, music and mime, the festival was traditionally held during the few days off work that slaves were allowed at Christmas.

In the book, Journal of a West India Proprietor, for example, slave owner Matthew Lewis arrives in Jamaica fresh from England on Jan. 1, 1816 and is immediately thrust into what he called ”the gayest and most amusing scene that I ever witnessed”.

But underneath the superficial gaiety was often a strong thread of resistance. According to the editors of Lewis’s Journal, the colour and festivity were used as ”satirical and subversive comment”, while sometimes providing a cover for rebellion.

The festival occurs throughout the Caribbean in different variations, in countries including the Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, St. Kitts and Antigua.

”It’s all over,” says cultural expert Amina Blackwood-Meeks. ”It’s different. You can see it has the same roots, but over the years it has been flavoured by their own local situation.”

The traditional characters are generally mask-wearing men, which experts see as a holdover from the African secret societies from which Jonkunnu is thought to originate. In African ceremonies the mask can be used to suggest the embodiment of ancestors.

The characters include a mix, some apparently introduced from Africa, with others later evolving as a result of European influences.

The Sailor, the Policeman, the Belly Woman – a comic figure representing a pregnant woman, the Devil, and the Actor Boy are some of the characters.

The Cow head, and the Horse head are traditionally two of the most feared characters, charging and chasing Jonkunnu spectators. Researchers suggest that they represent the power of horned animals, which embody strength and power in African tradition, where they are often associated with secret rituals, funerals and warriors.

The Horse head is also believed to represent the overseer on slave plantations, who usually rode a horse and carried a whip.

The character known as Pitchy-patchy is covered with strips of colourful cloth, while Jack-in-the Green is similarly attired, but all in green. Jack-in-the Green is believed to have originally represented gardeners on sugar estates.

Red Set girls and Blue Set girls, whose costumes include full-skirted dresses and parasols, clearly show the European influence. Some scholars believe the Red Set represents the redcoats or army and the Blue Set, the blue jackets or navy.

Researchers have long debated the origin and historical significance of the festival, and even the origin of its name is open to question.

The name evolved from similar sounding African words, Dzono (sorcerer) kunu (deadly) and nu (man), suggests Frederick Cassidy, author of the Dictionary of Jamaican English.

Another theory relates the event’s origin to a celebration of John Conny, an influential and notorious 18th century Ghanaian chief.

The festival’s early characters are thought to be primarily African in origin, with European influenced figures introduced later, helping to make the festival acceptable to the ‘plantocracy’.

”Our ancestors relied on the Jonkunnu, the freedom that they were given at Christmas-time,” says Andrew Brodber, chairman of the Jonkunnu Committee at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission.

”The plantocracy and the enslaved people had a chance to be free at that time,” Brodber explains.

”In fact, some of the Jonkunnu groups were supported because, as well as celebrating African traditions, it also celebrated English traditions, so that merger, that ‘creolisation’, took place, and it was accepted to some point. (But) after a time, it became threatening to plantocracy,” Brodber says.

Those fears emerged several years after Emancipation, in 1841, when the Jonkunnu riots took place, a serious civil uprising that resulted in the mayor of Kingston banning the festival.

Over the years, frequent confrontations have occurred between police and the players, resulting in authorities repeatedly trying to suppress the festival.

The repeated attempts at repression are largely responsible for the festival dying out in many communities, says cultural expert and storyteller Amina Blackwood-Meeks.

”Very often, we forget that the things about us that die, didn’t die from the level of the people, they were banned by those who fear them,” she says.

Fear and a lack of understanding have often been associated with the festival, now seen by scholars as having great historical and cultural significance.

The elaborate costuming necessary to maintain the group’s authentic appearance was part of the financial problem facing the Grange Hill Jonkunnu when Neville Gordon began to work with the players.

The group now survives primarily from the money it earns performing in local hotels.

Nationally, in an effort to preserve and encourage the craft more widely, the Cultural Development Commission has started a competition, to teach students the intricacies of Jonkunnu costume design, dance and music at an early age.

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