There is a ruckus at the back gate of the Six Pack Shack on Prison Lane. In a few hours, a record crowd of 60,000 people will assemble in downtown Nassau to see who will win top prize in a competition the Bahamian Minister of Youth, Sports, & Culture calls the "primary expression of national identity": the Junkanoo Parade. Every holiday season the inhabitants of these islands otherwise devoted to tourism compete among themselves to see who can turn out the most marchers, build the most beautiful costumes, perform the most breathtaking dances, and make the most noise to a steady beat with drums and bells. On Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and again on New Year's Day, the parade begins in the dead of night and goes on well into the morning, until the last of several thousand costumed revelers has completed the circuit down Bay Street, up Shirley, then back down Bay Street again. In the humble neighborhoods locals call "over the hill," literally divided by a steep slope from Nassau's tourist sector, each of the competing junkanoo groups jealously guards secret shacks where costume builders work furiously to earn "bragging rights" for the coming year. In the Six Pack Shack, a battalion of 25 armed with glue guns scurries to make this the first Boxing Day victory for the upstart junkanoo group, One Family. In 1993 a group of prominent professionals broke off from perennial junkanoo champions, the Saxons, to pursue a mission that marches far beyond the parade route. One Family hopes to turn the common cause of junkanoo into a lasting community that will unite all Bahamians, from the most exalted to... More >>>