I once lived in a house that sat nearly at the top of a steep, moss-covered hill. There were steps that had been carved into the limestone years – possibly decades before I was even born. I remember that the ground got slippery when it rained. At the bottom of this hill was one of the town’s main roads, and at the other side of the hill, was the other.
It always began in the weeks approaching Christmas. You could hear them coming from miles away – the primitive, handmade drums and trumpets made out of the horns of bulls. They would burst into sight and consciousness–a prancing, chanting, procession of fierce masked men and women. They were the living avatars of mystical beasts, their significance long lost in the primitive memory of our African ancestry. They were the Jonkanoo.
Among children and even some adults, there was always one of two responses to the arrival of the Jonkanoo to a locale. Some raced breathlessly to the streets or the houses they visited to watch the spectacle. Others quivered in fear and fled. I must admit, that as a child I often succumbed to the urge to run away, heart racing.
I think believed on some level, that in masquerading as the Jonkanoo–these people had truly become something other than human. Beyond the fear I felt I could hear something else. It was perhaps, the faint echo of a heartbreaking cant for lost memories. All descendants of slaves and misplaced societies carry this song in our hearts. To this day, I remain convinced that threaded into the cacophony of horns and drums and song of the Jonkanoo was perhaps, the forgotten truths of all people–past, present and future.
Tags: 1flashficdaily, african ancestry, dailydrabble, flash fiction, handmade drums, jonkanoo, mystical beasts, speculative fiction
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