rake ‘n’ scrape
A traditional Bahamian music, usually played on accordion, saw and goatskin drum. Rake-n-scrape ensembles traditionally accompanied quadrille dancing and are an example of Creole musical style.
Junkanoo
an annual Bahamian festival of music and dance, developed in the eighteenth century and took the form of a night-time festival during which slaves would get together to visit, celebrate, and socialize. Junkanoo was limited throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as tourists began to frequent the Bahamas following World War II, junkanoo made resurgence. In the years leading to independence in 1973, junkanoo became a measure of Bahamian identity
Syncretism
1: the combination of different forms of belief or practice
2: the fusion of two or more originally different inflectional forms
Canboulay
processions during the Carnival that commemorated the harvesting of burnt cane fields during slavery
Cariso
Traditional French creole song. Early from of calypso, often employing insulting or satirical lyrics.
Calypso
A traditional French Creole humorous song that comments on life in the Caribbean. The word cariso was used to describe a French Creole song in the 1780s, and in Trinidad. Early 19th century, calypso was connected to kalenda (Stick fighting) a central part of early carnival celebrations. With emancipation (1834) Carnival and calypso become predominantly Afro-Creole.
Kalenda
(stick-fighting) Kalenda bands (organized by neighborhood) would square off with each other, first through song and then, more often than not, through stick-fighting. Kalenda was a central component of early carnival celebrations in Trinidad in the 19th century.
Soca
Trinidadian popular music that developed in the 1970s and is closely related to calypso. Used for dancing at Carnival and at fetes, soca emphasizes rhythmic energy and studio production—including synthesized sounds and electronically mixed ensemble effects—over storytelling, a quality more typical of calypso songs, which are performed for seated audiences
Tamboo Bamboo
Bamboo percussion band used to accompany calypso songs during Carnival time in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Developed to replace stick fighting. Tamboo bamboo bands consist of three different sized instruments, each cut from bamboo: boom, foule, and cutter.
Steel Drums
Were first made from the oil drums left by the U.S. military after WWII. The steel drum, or pan, gradually replaced the tamboo bamboo ensemble. By the 1950s, steel bands gained popularity in England and the United States. The steel drums are “tuned” to play a range of pitches.
Steel band
A band composed of oil drums that have been “tuned” to play a range of pitches.
Montuno
the call-and-response part of a Rumba with the chorus/percussion.
Rumba
Cuban dance from that developed at the end of the 19th century. The typical Rumba ensemble consists of a lead vocalist, a chorus, clave, palitos, and congas. The name derives from the Cuban Spanish word rumbo which means “party” or “spree”. It is secular, with no religious connections
Guantanamera
(Spanish: “from Guantanamo [feminine]”, thus “woman from Guantanamo”) is perhaps the best known Cuban song and that country’s most noted patriotic song
Cuban Son
The Son cubano is a style of music and dance that originated in Cuba and gained worldwide popularity in the 1930s. The Cuban son is one of the most influential and widespread forms of Latin American music: its derivatives and fusions, especially salsa, have spread across the world.

The basic son ensemble of early 20th-century Havana consisted of guitar, tres, claves, bongos, marimbula or botija, and maracas. The tres plays the typical Cuban ostinato figure known as guajeo.

Punta
A song genre that symbolically reenacts the cock-and-hen mating dance and is usually composed by women. Punta is performed during festivals, at wakes, and at celebrations that follow dugu ceremonies (religious ceremonies during which a family appeals to the ancestors for help in solving a given problem).
Punta Rock
Popular music style developed by the Garifuna peoples, featuring call-and-response vocals and a rich percussion accompaniment of drums and rattles.
Garifuna
Also known as Garinagu a diaspora of people of West African and Amerindian descent, who settled along the Caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua during the nineteenth century.
Zouk
A fast tempo style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, popularized by the group Kassav in the 1980s.
Merengue Tipico
the term preferred by most musicians as it is more respectful and emphasizes the music’s traditional nature. Merengue tipico is the oldest style of merengue still performed today, its origins dating back to the 1850s.

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Originally played on the metal scraper called guira, the Tambora, and a stringed instrument. Stringed instruments were replaced with two-row diatonic button accordions when Germans began to travel to the island in the 1880s as part of the tobacco trade.

Merengue
Dominican Republic dance music in 4/4 meter developed from danza and contradanza. 1930s Rafael Trujillo, dictator of Trinidad, appropriates the merengue as national music. Uses it to define Dominican culture (Iberian) against Haitian culture (African
Rastafarian
The Rastafari movement is a monotheistic, new religious movement that arose in a Christian culture in Jamaica in the 1930s. Its adherents, who worship Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, former Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1936 and 1941-1974), as God incarnate, the Second Advent, are known as Rastafarians, or Rastas
Reggae
A music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that evolved out of the earlier genres of ska and rocksteady.
Reggaeton
blends Jamaican musical influences of dancehall, and Trinidadian soca with those of Latin America, such as salsa, bomba, Latin hip hop, and electronica. Vocals include rapping and singing, typically in Spanish. Its sound derives from the Reggae en Espanol from Panama. The genre was invented, shaped and made known in Puerto Rico where it got its name; most of its current artists are also from Puerto Rico.