The Executive Director for the National Commission on culture and the United States of America Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Stephanie S. Sullivan officially launched the 2022 world Junkanoo Festival yesterday in Accra (Ghana).
The Junkanoo festival is celebrated each year in two spectacular parades, on Boxing Day (26th December) and New Year’s Day. The root of Junkanoo is found in the continent of Africa, it often had Slaves hiding their faces under a flour paste during it’s celebration.
The festival is one of the Caribbean’s street parades with music, it is often celebrated with colourful costumes to exuberant dance routines, participants spend months preparing for the pageantry of this street parade accompanied by the steady beat of whistles, cowbells, horns, and drums hours after midnight.
History has it that, the origins was named after John Canoe, the theory surrounding the name is that, John Canoe was an African trader on the West African Coast during the era of slavery and was often portrayed as a rebellious slave, while at other times as a successful Black merchant in West Africa whose story was carried over to the Bahamas through oral tradition (Sands, 2008).
The Festival was originally celebrated in the evenings, after the slave owners had gone to bed. Today, Junkanoo is seen as the celebration t of costumes, music, and dance to reunite Africans lost culture and a step towards conserving our heritage.