Happy Independence Day to all of my fellow Bahamians!
53 years is no small feat, especially for a country as small as ours. While you enjoy your conch salad, sky juice or coconut rum today, I invite you to take a moment and pause.
Listen to the sounds around you. Do you hear the waves crashing the shore? Do you hear the birds singing a melody? What music is playing in the background? Is it Civil Servant by KB?
53 years of Bahamian Sound, what are you listening to?
This Independence Day, we have more to listen to than just our usual playlists. It’s our duty to take a beat, listen to what our islands are saying. Whether that’s through rake n scrape, through DJ Melody or Ovadose, or through the sound of our environment, which is melodious in it’s own right. We often talk about the beauty of our sun, sand and sea, but we only talk about it’s picturesque attributes. What about the sound behind the photo? The laughter when you lay out your towel and bucket of KFC on the beach, with a couple of Kaliks kalikkin in your hand?
Think about it. Think about the sound of goatskin drums warming up before a Junkanoo rush, the rattle of cowbells finding their rhythm, the whistle that cuts through a crowd on Bay Street. Think about the sound of your grandmother’s voice calling you in from the yard before the streetlights come on. Think about domino slamming on a table on a Sunday afternoon, on Montague Beach. Think about the preacher’s voice rising and falling on a Sunday morning, the congregation answering back. Think about the sound of a conch shell being cracked open on the dock, the straw market vendors calling out to tourists. These are sounds we know so well we’ve stopped hearing them. That’s what happens when something becomes home. It fades into the background, and we forget it was ever music at all.
On this Independence Day, I challenge you to listen to more than just music, even though I’d prefer if you must listen, you listened to some rake n scrape.
Listen to the sounds of your country, what the people are saying, what your family is saying. With everything happening in our Bahamaland, I think the least we can do is sit down and pay attention to what we often take for granted as the backdrop to our lives.
We Born, Bred and Ga Dead Bahamian. We need to listen to what The Bahamas has to say.
