#jonkonnu

Jonkonnu, aka John Canoe, is a well-known African diaspora holiday tradition, celebrated in the Caribbean.

North Carolina is one of the rare places in North America with records of Jonkonnu.

At plantations like Somerset Place Historic Site

(@somersetplaceshs) and Historic Stagville, enslaved people gathered to drum, dance, and parade during Jonkonnu. often celebrated around Christmas. The Rag Man, dressed in colorful fringe with animal furs and horns, led the way.

In North Carolina, enslaved people and their descendants actively celebrated Jonkonnu through the 1800s. However, by the early 1900s, the tradition faded as Jim Crow laws took hold.

Today, the spirit of Jonkonnu lives on. Historic Stagville (@historicstagville) hosts an annual event featuring music and dance that honors this African diaspora masquerade tradition.

via @ncculture (repost), slides 3 + 5 via @rootinnajumieka

Douglas Chambers, professor of African studies at the University of Southern Mississippi, suggests a possible Igbo origin from the Igbo yam deity Njoku Ji, referencing festivities in time for the New Yam Festival. Chambers also suggests a link with the Igbo okonko masking tradition of southern Igboland, which features horned maskers and other masked characters, similar to junkanoo masks.

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Few things brought me so much joy at Christmastime as when my mother recounted the story of how her sister, my aunt, ran from the Jamaican masked masqueraders known as Jonkonnu and tripped over her own feet.

Sylvia Wynter - Jonkonnu, John Canoe

Yoruba egúngún by Stephan Gladieu

Masquerades of Nigeria, 2004

Companions of Christmas 13: Pitchy Patchy

Once a highly decorated Akan military commander, the man who would become known as Pitchy Patchy was stolen from his home and enslaved in Jamaica, but he was able to escape to freedom and, operating from the Maroon towns that he helped to defend, would regularly lead raids against the plantations to free others.

Since the folks that he rescued didn’t have access to the kinds of ornate trophies and medals that he’d worn in the past, they would honor him with a simple strip of colored cloth as a sign of their gratitude for his valor. He saved so many people that he was eventually festooned with these cloth strips, to the point that they covered his entire body.

Celebrating Christmas

Jonkonnu in North Carolina

In antebellum North Carolina, Christmas season was the time for an African American celebration found almost nowhere else in North America, but widespread through the islands of the Caribbean. Variously called Jonkonnu, Johnkannaus, John Coonah, or John Canoe, the custom was described in the slave community of Jamaica in the late eighteenth century where it was thought to have been of African origin. Although the details often changed from place to place, Jonkonnu usually involved several African American men who dressed in costumes made of rags and animal skins with grotesque masks and horns. Sometimes one of their number wore his best clothes instead. They danced wildly, often playing musical instruments and singing. In towns, the Jonkonnu men went from house to house while on plantations they performed at the homes of masters, overseers, and other white people. They expected to be rewarded with gifts of money or liquor. Jonkonnu dancers were often accompanied by crowds of men and women who cheered them on while taking no direct part in the performance.