Junkanoo Through The Eyes Of Jackson Burnside

        

Posted by: travadmin on Dec 02, 2003 – 01:12 AM
shows  If Junkanoo is the heart of Bahamian cultural expression, those persons at its fore front must be its major arteries. Among such Junkanoo luminaries is Jackson Burnside, leader of One Family Junkanoo group. True junkanoo that he is, he captures the festival’s essence – in words and deeds.

From 12:00am to 11:00am on Boxing Day December 26, and from 1:00am to 11:00am and New Year’s Day, you will see this famous junkanoo and his group as they pit themselves against six other Group A Junkanoo groups.

The defending champion in both Junkanoo events, One Family also boasts victories in the New year’s Day 1996 and Boxing Day 2000 parades.

To view the upcoming parades, you can purchase bleacher tickets. However, the venues for ticket sales were not finalized up to press time.

Perhaps you’d rather stand and dance around during the festivals, anyway, as many do.

Their route is from Frederick Street, east on to Bay, south on to Victoria, and west on to Shirley.

To enhance your appreciation of the extravaganzas and related matters, you would do well to see Junkanoo through Burnside’s eyes, commencing with his childhood.

From an early age, he demonstrated a keen interest in the festival, which slaves began in the 17th century and named after a slave trading West African prince of the period.

Says Burnside: “Junkanoo is important to Bahamian culture. It helps to preserve the heritage in that it is passing on the music and dance and the artistic expression of our ancestors…. It connects us and links us to the African past. But it also is a tool that integrates the other influences, the European – in particular the British influence–– with the African influence. And what is extremely important is that that is something that grows out of our experience of making a statement of our humanity.”

Burnside’s own Junkanoo recollections and experiences, dating back to the 1950s, his childhood days in Mason’s Addition, offer you a lesson in the metamorphosis of Junkanoo and Bahamian culture.

In this light, it is fitting to peruse his professional resume before delving into his Junkanoo life.

A man of many hats, he is a renowned architect and artist. He holds a Master of Architecture and has lectured at a number of prestigious institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. And, for the past ten years, he has been a visiting lecturer at the Caribbean School of Architecture in Jamaica.

Also, he has practiced architecture in several countries other than The Bahamas – England, Bangladesh, Iran, and Israel, for example.

His paintings, which capture the colour, energy, and vibrancy of Junkanoo, have drawn acclaim locally and internationally.

In addition, he pays homage to the spirit of Junkanoo in the naming of his Village Road museum and art gallery, Doongalik Studios, as it evokes the sound of the cowbell, a major Junkanoo instrument.

There you can polish up your Junkanoo experience in particular and your Bahamian experience on the whole. You can purchase Junkanoo ornaments and paintings as well as learn about Bahamian history, music, and culture.

Burnside’s further commitment to Junkanoo is evident in
his hosting of “Junkanoo Talks,” a popular radio program on Island FM on Saturdays. As its name suggests, it examines various Junkanoo issues – past and present.

It should not be taken for granted that he and others of his stature value Junkanoo highly, and that people from all strata of the Bahamian society now proudly embrace the festival as a part of our culture, for in the past, especially up to the 1950’s, Junkanoo was perceived as a rogue event. For many it was a time when gangsters caroused. “There were still some people,” declares Burnside, “who frowned on Junkanoo considerably.”

Among such people was Burnside’s own family. His grandfather, for instance, saw “no sense in it.”

When Burnside associated with junkanoos in his neighbourhood, his mother monitored him closely. “The guys of Fort Hill,” says he, “used to rush in a cycle around the block where I lived. And my mother would let me rush; as long as she could see me, I could rush in the gang. So I could rush from one corner to the next. When the fellows went around the block, I had to come back home – until they came again, and then I could rush with them again.”

Meanwhile, his appetite for the Junkanoo craft had been whetted. In this regard, a number of junkanoos influenced him, including the late Lenny Bartlett, who became a construction technique advisor to Winston “Gus” Cooper, leader of the Valley Boys. Bartlett was instrumental in the Saxon’s history making switch from the employment of tissue paper to crepe paper in costume making.

Whilst a student of Southern Junior School, presently Columbus Primary School on Wulff Road, Burnside discovered Bartlett’s art world. Says he: “One of the influences too, and Percy (‘Volla’) would remember this too: the first time I went by Mr Lenny Bartlett’s house – the person I believe would have influenced ‘Gus’ Cooper as well. Lenny Bartlett was a man who did individual costumes. And he invited us because we had to pass his house to go to and from Southern Junior School.’So we would stop there from time to time to see what… he was working on.”

Around that time, 1958, Cooper and other students of St John’s College who lived in the Centreville area, also known as “The Valley,” founded the Valley Boys. (The Centreville area is called “The Valley” because it bounds three hills: Centerville, Hawkins, and Sears Addition.)

Because the boys were from “respectable” families, the image of Junkanoo ratcheted up. Its currency, says Burnside, was further enhanced because the””respectable” boys won in their first parade,””and they kept coming back.”

For Burnside personally, the involvement of his St Augustine’s schoolmates with the Valley Boys, especially McNear Brown and Arthur Minus, was particularly important. He declares: “These were the guys that I rode to school with every morning at 7:00 o’clock. So they were Valley Boys, and they were Junkanoos. When the track season was over they turned to Junkanoo. And so I had to listen to all that (talk about Junkanoo)…and I wanted to be a part.

“But I couldn’t be a part of the Valley Boys because I couldn’t go to practice. My parents wouldn’t allow it.”

However, encouraged by Brown and Minus, he first participated in Junkanoo as a scrapper at the age of ten.

His next notable step as a Junkanoo would foreshadow his artistic genius: the creation of a 3-D star along with Brown for the junior parade.

So high a quality was the work that they were encouraged to display it on the adult parade. Unfortunately, a neighbour who was supposed to show the costume fell asleep in it on Rawson Square during the and missed the judging.

Burnside was distraught. “I was so disappointed. I felt letdown, and I discontinued to rush craft.”

Nonetheless, he continued to enjoy Junkanoo as a scrapper. (But he wouldn’t rush craft again until 1979, over twenty years later, when he became a Saxon.)

In the meantime, though, he honed his Junkanoo craft. “I’ve never been a drummer,” says he. “I was a cowbell shaker for a bit – not much. Once any group I was in recognized my skills, the fellows came to me to assist them in that area (craft).”

From 1965 to 1976, he was absent from the Junkanoo scene because of his studies and employment abroad.

Upon his return, he resumed rushing as a scrapper, and for a couple years he was a Junkanoo judge.

Importantly, he began to see junkanoos with new eyes. Although he had always respected their abilities, he was even more impressed by them; he “realized that some of the junkanoos were exhibiting skills and some of the principles of art, and even though they didn’t call them by their scientific names, they were principles I studied in Universities.

“I think often times, the artist – the Junkanoo artist isn’t aware of some of the things they may be doing. It doesn’t mean that the Junkanoo artist doesn’t need to study, but they must recognize that the talent and knowledge they have built up is certainly more superior or far greater than they give themselves credit for.”

In 1979 at “Volla’s” request Burnside joined the Saxons.

While with the Saxons, he was influenced by a number of junkanoos in the group: “Volla,” Arthur Gibson, and Phillip Cooper, among others.

Recognized for his artistic skills, he was made co-leader of the group.

From the early to mid 1980s he was a part of a sub-group of the Saxons called the
“Great Goombay Dancers.” He says the group was “looking to develop entertainment and show form of Junkanoo … taking it to the stage.” It performed in a number of places, mainly North America.

In 1993, he joined the newly formed One Family, becoming one of its earliest members.

Despite the competition among Junkanoo groups, he sees the festival more as a “development tool” than an “entertainment tool”: “it’s a community coming together and developing a way of thinking about our own creativity to move people forward.

“There are lessons in business, there are lessons in creativity, in innovation, in the sciences. All these things are inherent parts of moving the community forward from January to January.”

Further, Burnside opines that when Junkanoo is viewed only as an “entertainment tool” or a “party,” the participants feel a great sense of loss and failure if they do not win.

‘The junkanoo, he advises, should focus on sharing his talent with his community, his “neighbour,” which is synonymous with God’s commandment that one should love one’s “neighbour” as one’s self.

It’s no surprise then, that Burnside decries the offering of inducements to Junkanoos. Reflecting on the advent of the festival, he says: “It was never to get paid; it was to affirm the fact that people had a connection to the Almighty, because that’s where we get all this talent from: that’s where we get our music talent from, that’s where we get our artistic talent from, our dance talent.”

Burnside supports remuneration of a junkanoo only if it’s secondary to sharing his talent with his “neighbour.”

This multi-gifted junkanoo leader, notwithstanding his successes as a junkanoo, contemplates retirement. “You’ve seen the last of my years participating in Junkanoo that I’ve been participating in,” he declares. “Now some other guys won’t say that – they are not prepared to say that. They may dance…may be dancing to the same beat until the good Lord calls them. And while I would like to be until my dying day a junkanoo on the parade, I don’t know if I can continue to participate as a leader, as active as I have been in the past.”

Once he has relinquished his Junkanoo leadership, Burnside will devote more time to Doongalik Studios and his other interests – architecture, painting, sculpture, and writing, for instance.

He plans to teach architecture at the College of The Bahamas “when the program gets expanded … and to present in other parts of the world.”

Whenever he leaves frontline Junkanoo – sooner or later – you can be certain that Burnside’s Junkanoo spirit would continue to manifest in his pursuits in other ways, for he’s a true junkanoo – one who demonstrates and promotes an appreciation for the spirit of Junkanoo beyond the show, beyond the colours of Bay Street. He truly “walks the talk.”

Note: By Glen C. Nairn, What’s On