BAHAMAS-CULTURE: ‘Local Culture First’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

DeNash

NASSAU, Apr 16 1996 (IPS) - In a concert hall full to overflowing, 5,000 Bahamians crushed against each other last week as they rocked to the beat of Jamaican reggae music and listened to the biting lyrics of deejay artist Buju Banton.

Promoters were ecstatic. Fans drifted on the mood of the night.

But for some Bahamians who believe their indigenous culture is dying, this concert was yet another foreign “invasion”, albeit from a neighbouring Caribbean territory.

A powerful lobby promoting ‘Bahamas Culture First’ is agitating for action to be taken — including restrictions on the amount of foreign music played on local radio. And the authorities have started a drive to promote things peculiarly Bahamian.

The campaign has split a society whose proximity to the U.S. mainland and dependence on that country for the survival of its key industries — tourism and financial services — have had given its culture an ambiguous status.

Ironically, the impetus for ‘Bahamas Culture First’ developed out of the eye-opening experiences of Bahamanians when they went to the Smithsonian Insitutte in the United States in 1993. While exposing a side of these islands off the Florida coast that Americans did not know existed — the world beyond beautiful beaches and casinos — they were themselves impressed by the depth of culture in this chain of islands.

At the urging of the Bahamanian cultural attache to Washington, the Smithsonian had invited a delegation to their annual Festival of American Folklife. In July 1994, it all came together. More than 800,000 people got a taste of Bahamian dances, junkanoo, crafts and oral history. From research to production, the weekend included everything from boat building to bush medicine.

Reaction was positive — on the viewers as well as on the Bahamian participants themselves, who were finding out things about their country and feeling proud of exposing it.

They set out to change the image of the Bahamian who, in the whimsical words of one of the storytellers at the Smithsonian — Dr Cleveland Eneas — was typified by an individual “who believes that he was born with the inalienable right to go to Miami”.

Now, after two years of research, the authorities are ready to put on display in all 250 Bahamian public schools the cultural exposition exposed to foreigners in the Smithsonian. That begins in September.

It will be called ‘A Piece of Cultural Gold’. (MORE)

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