Goombay Festival, 2024

In 2024, The FIU Humanities Department held an invitation for local Miami photographers to document the Goombay Festival in Historic Coconut Grove, AKA Little Bahamas.

As a former marching band jit and SFL history nerd, I primarily wanted to preserve a truth archive of the Goombay festival and the people, primarily focusing on the Junkanoo [ @junkanooriddimsentertainment ].
The music has been shuffling on the streets of Grand Avenue since 1977.

Miami is a city built on the labor and pioneering efforts of Bahamian immigrants, and despite the erasures of Miami’s historic landscapes through gentrification and hyper development, this city would never be what it is without the Bahamian people and the pioneering efforts of immigrants. I hope for the city to one day focus on preservation instead greed.

Thank you to Dr. Aarti Mehta Kroll and the FIU Humanities Department for their efforts spent these last few years to archive the cultural legacies of Miami and its people. Thank you to and The American Folklife Center Community Collections Grant for supporting this initiative.

Selected images from this collection are archived with The Library of Congress. 

Presented in partnership with Sanctuary of the Arts, Vizcaya, the Humanities Edge, FIU African & African Diaspora Studies Program, Mosaic Miami, and Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church of Miami.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/