Celebrating and preserving the indigenous musical culture of The Bahamas called Rake & Scrape.  An amalgamation of the three dominant cultures Indian, Arawak/Lucayan; European and African, which is evident in the music.  The African goatskin drum, the European concertina or ‘squeeze box’ and the ingenuity of the Bahamian scraping the carpenter saw with animal jaw bone, knife or screw driver, accompanied with the Indians’ gourds, calabash and coconut shells.  There are also dances that accompany the Rake & Scrape music called the quadrille, the heel toe, the round back, and polka dances.

In the first half the nineteenth century, masters in The Bahamas eagerly embraced the Set Dances of Europe that had become popular on both sides of the Atlantic.  Their slaves followed suit, perhaps eager to show the sameness of the human species regardless of skin colour.  But long after the masters had moved on to more fashionable diversions, the slaves in the small settlements of isolated islands adopted the dances as their as their very own, coloured them with a distinctive African spirit, and time-capsuled they became.’

‘Rake & Scrape moves in the inner depths of our soul and seeps to the surface. The trickle becomes a flood; surging tide that pours through our body, and eventually erupts in unique and inimitable expressions.  It is the African compulsion for music and dance.  In a brutal world where humanness was a luxury denied, Music & Dance became lifelines to reality… partners in a dance of survival… embedded in the besieged identity of slaves brought from Africa to The Bahamas.  This music, the ‘bastard’ child of Bahamian music, was regarded for decades as music worthy only of the ‘lower classes.’ writes Arlene Nash Ferguson.

Today Rake N’ Scrape music is almost identical to Rip Saw’ music of the Turks & Caicos.  Rake N’ Scrape music is reported to have its roots in Cat Island’ says Smithsonian Folk life, 1995.