Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 3 - Jonkanoo Performances of Resistance, Freedom, and Memory

  • from Part I - Literary and Generic Transitions
  • Edited by Evelyn O'Callaghan, University of the West Indies, Tim Watson, University of Miami
  • Book:
    Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
    Published online:
    16 December 2020
    Print publication:
    14 January 2021, pp 52-66

  • Summary

    Throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, enslaved people in the Caribbean and South, Central, and North America performed Jonkanoo, a masked parade of dance and song. This Christmas tradition was rooted in the memory of armed resistance to imperialism in the figure of‘John Cannu’, also known as ‘John Konny’, a West African tribal chief who rebelled against Dutch settlers in the 1720s. After being captured and sent as a slave to Jamaica, he became a folk hero featured in Jonkanoo performances. Merging African dance and masquerade traditions with English carnivalesque mummery, these performances were tolerated by slave owners as a ‘temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men’, as Mikhail Bakhtin posited. Jonkanoo was nonetheless a form of resistance against white oppression and persists today in Jamaica and the Bahamas as vernacular performances of resistance, freedom, and memory that represent a fluidity between formal theatre, music, and street performances.