The story
Jonkunnu Festival in Kingston
Jonkunnu, or Jonkonnu, is a Christmas masquerade tradition rooted in West African masking practices adapted under slavery, featuring characters like Pitchy Patchy, Cow Head, Horse Head and Belly Woman moving through Jamaican streets to bamboo fife and drum accompaniment. Kingston's own tradition nearly disappeared after an 1841 mayoral ban, and surviving bands there now perform only periodically.
Jonkunnu, also spelled Jonkonnu or John Canoe, brings masked bands through Jamaican towns at Christmastime in a tradition that scholars trace to West African masking practices, adapted by enslaved people and their descendants on Jamaican plantations during the limited holiday time colonial slaveholders granted around Christmas.