Examines the role music has played in the formation of the political and national identity of the Bahamas. It analyzes Bahamian musical life as it has been influenced and shaped by the islands’ location between the United States and the rest of the Caribbean; tourism; and Bahamian colonial and postcolonial history. Focusing on popular music in the second half of the twentieth and early 21st c., in particular rake-n-scrape and Junkanoo, the author finds a Bahamian music that has remained culturally rooted in the local even as it has undergone major transformations. Highlighting the ways entertainers have represented themselves to Bahamians and to tourists, he illustrates the shifting terrain that musicians navigated during the rapid growth of tourism and in the aftermath of independence.
