The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and 88% of its population. The archipelagic state consists of more than 3,000 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes The Bahamas' territory as encompassing 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
"March On, Bahamaland" is the national anthem of the Bahamas. Timothy Gibson composed the music and authored the lyrics. It was adopted as the national anthem in 1973, when the country gained independence from the United Kingdom.
The music of the Bahamas is associated primarily with Junkanoo, a celebration which occurs on Boxing Day and again on New Year's Day. Parades and other celebrations mark the ceremony. Groups like The Baha Men, Ronnie Butler,Kirkland Bodie and Twindem have gained massive popularity in Japan, the United States and other places. Other popular Bahamian artists include Stileet and Stevie S.
The music of Bermuda is often treated as part of the Caribbean music area. Its musical output includes pop singer Heather Nova, and her brother Mishka. Collie Buddz has also gained international success with reggae hits in the US and the UK.
The music of Turks and Caicos Islands is best known for its ripsaw music. It is accompanied by an array of instruments, including maracas, triangles, box guitar, conga drums, goat and cowskin drums, accordion, concertina and, most prominently and uniquely, the carpenter saw.
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian guitarist and singer. He is well known for his vocalizations and humming while playing the guitar. Several American musicians, including Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead, Ry Cooder, Catfish Keith, Woody Mann, and Olu Dara, as well as the British guitarist John Renbourn, were influenced by and have recorded variations of his arrangements of gospel and Bahamian songs.
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern Afro-Caribbean people descend from the Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
Bahamian Americans are an ethnic group of Caribbean Americans of Bahamian ancestry. There are an estimated 56,797 people of Bahamian ancestry living in the US as of 2019.
"King" Eric Gibson was a Bahamian musician and entrepreneur. He was also the semiofficial Ambassador of Bahamian Goodwill.
Bahamian culture is a hybrid of African, European, and other cultures.
Blake Alphonso Higgs, better known as "Blind Blake", was the best-known performer of goombay and calypso in the Bahamas from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Macfarlane Gregory Anthony Mackey, known professionally as Tony McKay and Exuma, was a Bahamian musician, artist, playwright, and author best known for his music that blends folk, rock, carnival, junkanoo, calypso, reggae, and African music stylings.
Goombay is a form of Bahamian music and a drum used to create it. The drum is a membranophone made with goat skin and played with the hands. The term Goombay has also symbolized an event in the Bahamas, for a summer festival with short parades known as ‘Junkanoo’.
Ronald Butler Sr., MBE was a famous Bahamian calypso and rake n scrape entertainer and singer. Butler is referred to as "The Godfather of Bahamian Music" and his career spans more than five decades.
André Toussaint was a Haitian singer and guitarist who emigrated to Nassau, Bahamas in 1953 and performed there until his death in 1981. He sang and recorded in several languages and in a variety of styles, most notably calypso.
"Sly Mongoose" is a Trinidadian folk song and calypso which is widely recognized in the Caribbean.
Watermelon spoiling on the vine is a Bahamian folksong, the recording was done by Americans Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle and sung by a Black Bahamian with a banjo on New Bight, Cat Island, Bahamas in 1935. The song has also been recorded by "Blind Blake And The Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos" in 1951 on the album A Group Of Bahamian Songs.
"Don't Touch Me Tomato", originally published in 1949 simply as "Tomato", is a song written by Trinidadian musician Sam Manning, and usually performed in the style of calypso, mento, or rocksteady. The song is sometimes credited as "traditional", or ascribed to the French writers Henri Lemarchand and Joseph Bouillon after it was recorded by Josephine Baker. It was first recorded in New York by June Nelson; other notable recordings have been by Marie Bryant (1952) and Phyllis Dillon (1968).