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Emancipation Day Celebrations
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When:
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1 - 4 Aug 2008 (annual)
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Where:
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Nassau
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Bahamians look for any excuse to stage a Junkanoo festival and Emancipation Day is the best excuse of all. The celebrations are mainly concentrated in Fox Hill village, Nassau - a former slave village whose inhabitants, according to folklore, heard about their freedom a week after everyone else on the island. Perhaps that explains their enthusiastic and extravagant festivities.
The famous Bahamian Junkanoo festival is similar to costumed parades at carnival. Participants clad in paper costumes compete against each other in groups of 200 to 400 to pulsating music (Junkanoo - a combination of reggae and calypso unique to the island).
No Caribbean celebration would be complete without food, and the Emancipation festival luncheon is one of the biggest events during the four days of revelry. The other big event is the culture show, which features calypso bands, limbo dancing, folk tales, greasy pole and dancing competitions, and there is also the all-important beauty queen contest.
Emancipation festivities culminate on Fox Hill Day, the day that the community recognises the freedom granted to their ancestors in 1834, making this the oldest event in the Bahamas.
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