Harbour Island’s Boxing Day 2024 Junkanoo parade – featuring a spectacularly colourful, and rhythmic clash of two competing local junkanoo groups – the Warriors and the Zulu Dancers, was a feast of vibrant costumes, creative characters, choreographed dancing, and melodic live brass and drum music performances.
The ‘Briland’ parade event, hosted along the bayfront road at the heart of Harbour Island on the evening of the Boxing Day holiday, December 26th, 2024, saw a crush of holiday season visitors and local Briland and Eleuthera residents filling out the parade venue ahead of the start, which got underway around 8:00 p.m. The bay street thoroughfare, made narrower by the double line of spectators on either side of the roadway, could hardly contain the parading junkanooers, as they put on a high energy performance – the like, not seen since before the pandemic. The large crowd of local resident families and visitors to Harbour Island, taking in the cultural display, flowed in and out of the adjoining vendor’s site, along the palm-lined beachfront, where local vendors offered food and drinks throughout the evening.
The night kicked off with the first A-Division competing group, the Zulu Dancers, in a presentation themed, ‘The Hollywood Awards’ – with a massive lead costume piece, step downs, off-the-shoulder creations, free dancing characters, and a large movie-themed choreographed dance troupe – showcasing ‘Maleficent’ and ‘Marilyn Monroe’ characters, along with brass and drum sections. The Warriors followed, highlighting a theme of “Indians”, complete with a ‘sitting bull’ step down costumed piece, and a vibrant choreographed dance section of ladies attired for battle with feathered headdresses and axes in hand.
Speaking with Mr. Duke Davis, one of the leaders of the Zulu Dancers, following the parade, about the journey to the fabulous bay street performance – he acknowledged that with the much smaller holiday season junkanoo events put on during the past several years, the 2024 Boxing Day parade was finally a return to the glory of pre-pandemic junkanoo parades in Briland, saying, “It went excellently. This event was bigger than ever!”
With a robust group of nearly 160 members, Zulu Dancers leaders, Duke Davis and Ken Moss, had prepared for the annual parade with a spirit of resilience and creativity. Despite facing significant challenges, including the loss of their junkanoo shack prior to the event, the two adapted by utilizing one of Davis’s private buildings under construction in Trianna Shores. With limited sponsorship, the group relied on seed money from the government, which enabled them to bring the group’s vision to life. On Boxing Day, their hard work paid off as they were declared the unofficial winners, underscoring the importance of community spirit and commitment to cultural celebration, despite the hurdles they faced.
As in the mainland Eleuthera parade the previous week, the Bahamas’ National Junkanoo Committee (NJC), adjudicated the Boxing Day competition in Harbour Island, and the unofficial results, announced at the end of the evening, placed the Zulu Dancers in first place, with the Warriors in second. Up to print time, however, official results by the NJC had not been made available for publication.
Following the unofficial announcement of results, NJC Deputy Co-Chair, Kishlane Smith, informed that at the time of judging on Boxing Day, NJC judges were unaware of several amendments to the parade competition rules, made during a meeting of the group leaders ahead of the parade. Mrs. Smith explained, “I am waiting on a letter from the Zulu leader, and from the Warriors leader, and signed by the chairman of the Harbour Island Junkanoo Committee… Apparently, the rules that we had were not the final rules… So, I am just waiting on them to get back to us… on what they want us to judge by… before we could release the official scores.”
(Photo credits: Harbour Island Boxing Day Junkanoo Parade – Elizabeth Bryan/The Eleutheran Newspaper)
