One night in Bimini the goats and I were in our hot...it was our first day there, Boxing Day night, we were in our hotel room and this fucking full BAND music started playing from outside...(as opposed to a full band playing inside our room). We ran out thinking it was a nightly parade like there was every night in Batavia...Spell Check,  I hate you, in Baracoa, Cuba. It was really great music, full band, horns, drums, fucking more horns and drums, cymbals, I really liked it. On our way out I asked a hotel maid in the breezeway what the music was. She sheepishly replied in her accent something like "junCANo." The kids and I went into the street, really an alley, behind the hotel...and nothing. Still the music but no people. We followed the sound, I was so excited, the music was really invigorating, that I started dancing in the alley (I don't do that often), mimicking holding a little girl riding on my shoulders like I used to in Cuba. Around a curtain of trees we saw a high school...and loudspeakers, I mean fucking humongous speakers, set up in the small courtyard entrance. No kids. Fucking a guy manning the speakers, like three at the high school entrance, and that was it. We walked back to the hotel, the music still playing and we passed a boy, maybe 13, heading the other way. "Son, what is that music called?" I asked. "Junkanoo, Bahamian Junkanoo." he answered. "Bahamian Junkanoo," I repeated to myself to remember. "Thanks, son."

When I got back to our room I googled "bahamian juncanoo." The Valley Boys are the big thing in Junkanoo and this was the piece we heard that night, "City of Gold." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mcqMxcSrxO8. Tremendous music.