By: Staff Writer
July 5, 2022
An Independent Jamaican Filmmaker wants to tell the story of the Caribbean and maintain the distinction that sets it apart from other cultures.
Ryan Eccleston, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that through his travels around the world he believes in keeping the Caribbean spirit alive through our festivals because it’s all we have as a people.
Mr Eccleston travels the Caribbean looking for interesting events to tell the story of these islands and is committed to doing so. “The Jamaican version of Jonkonnu, which is more like a masquerade and the Bahamian version of Jonkonnu (Junkanoo) is very different from ours. Bahamians maintain it and look forward to it every year, ours is much closer to Halloween or Masquerade and over the years it has been sidelined,” he said.
The Jonkonnu (John Canoe) Festival has existed in England and in many European countries. New World Countries of Latin traditions celebrate John Canoe carnival activities of various types. Traces of a direct continuation of this tradition can also be seen in carnivals of Rio de Janiero, New Orleans, Trinidad, and The Bahamas.
John Canoe, also known as January Conny, (died circa 1725) was the European name given to an Akan warrior from Axim, Ghana. He was a chief of the Ahanta people in the early 18th century, who established a stronghold in the defunct Fort Fredericksburg, Ghana and fought multiple wars with European traders for twenty years. It fell finally in 1725, though Canoe’s fate is unknown.
According to Edward Long, an 18th-century Jamaican slave owner/historian, the John Canoe festival was created in Jamaica and the Caribbean by those Akans who supported John Canoe in Fredericksburg and had subsequently been enslaved when it fell. The festival itself included motifs from battles typical of Akan fashion. The Ashanti swordsman became the “horned headed man”; the Ashanti commander became “Pitchy patchy” who also wears a battledress with what would resemble charms, referred to as a “Batakari”.
The Junkanoo Festival in The Bahamas takes place every Boxing Day and New Year’s Day in The Bahamas and is the primary cultural event for the country, like Carnival is to Trinidad and Tobago and Crop-over is for Barbados.
The Jamaican celebrations of Jonkonnu took the form of masked dancing, acting, processions, and also takes place at Christmas time. The tradition dates back to hundreds of years and was widely indulged by the slaves as part of their principal holiday celebration. The bands became very large and elaborate, setting the mark as a Christmas carnival.
Mr Eccleston doesn’t want the region to forget Jonkonnu at all, “Over the years, it has been sidelined. Bahamians have maintained theirs and we’re moving away from ours. But there are people that still hold firm to it, and practising it like it’s an initiation rite in some form because it has gone underground.”
Mr Eccleston made a movie about the Jonkonnu tradition in Jamaica titled “Jonkonnu Nuh Dead” which is a long film as well as he has a shortened version that is playing at the Film Folklore Festival in Trinidad.
The Jamaican filmmaker has another project that he was working on since 2018 called “Close to You,” which is going into the editing stage. The film “basically deals with the practice of people being buried on your family lands and homes in the countryside of Jamaica. That’s very common. It’s very common when you drive on the countryside and you see graveyards or tombstones in front or back of the house and a lot of time that’s generations upon generations of people living together with the dead.”
