Nassau - Doongalik Experience

Doongalik is the name of a center that tries to capture, preserve, extend and showcase the culture of the blacks who are the majority of Bahamians. The Bahamas were a British colony for so long and the English culture so stressed, that Africans lost most knowledge about their own culture.

Doongalik meets its cultural objectives by bringing together an art gallery, keeping alive the knowledge of local bush medicine (use of herbs), a shop selling Bahamian souvenirs plus a collection of Junkanoo costumes and sculptures.

Junkanoo are the parades held throughout The Bahamas on Boxing and New Year's Days and for which groups of artisans spend all year making costumes. The traditional percussion instruments used to make the music for the parades are goat skin drums and cow bells. It is the beating of the goatskins that make a sound like 'doon' while other instruments provide the click like 'galik'. Thus children who pretend to put on a Junkanoo used the onomatopoeia Doongalik to simulate the music. It was adopted of the name of this cultural experience.