The best known musical genre of the Turks and Caicos Islands

Turks and Caicos Islands

The Turks and Caicos Islands are a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union consisting of two groups of tropical islands in the Caribbean, the larger Caicos Islands and the smaller Turks Islands, known for tourism and as an offshore financial centre.The Turks and...

is ripsaw music

Ripsaw music

Ripsaw is a musical genre which originated in the Turks and Caicos Islands, specifically in the Middle and North Caicos. A very closely related variant, rake-and-scrape, is played in the Bahamas...

. It is accompanied by an array of instruments, including maracas, triangles, box guitar, conga drums, goat and cowskin drums, accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

, concertina

Concertina

A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It has a bellows and buttons typically on both ends of it. When pressed, the buttons travel in the same direction as the bellows, unlike accordion buttons which travel perpendicularly to it...

 and, most prominently and uniquely, the carpenter saw.

The saw is scraped with a metal object, such as a screwdriver, to produce a unique sound; this is called ripping the saw http://www.turksandcaicostourism.com/tctb/culture/music/. The use of the saw (which is the origin of the term ripsaw) is of uncertain origin, but may be in imitation of the Dominican and Haitian guiro

Güiro

The güiro is a Latin-American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound. The güiro is commonly used in Latin-American music, and plays a key role...

 or traditional African instruments like the shekere

Shekere

This article is about the musical instrument. for the musical genre, see Sekere.The shekere is an instrument from West Africa consisting of a dried gourd with beads woven into a net covering the gourd. Throughout the continent there are similar gourd/bead or gourd/seed percussion instruments. Some...

 and djembe

Djembe

A djembe also known as jembe, jenbe, djbobimbe, jymbe, yembe, or jimbay, or sanbanyi in Susu; is a skin-covered drum meant played with bare hands....

.

A closely related style called rake and scrape is known in the Bahamas, closely associated with Cat Island

Cat Island (Bahamas)

Cat Island is in the central Bahamas, and one of its districts, and has the nation's highest point. Its Mount Alvernia rises to 206 ft and is topped by a monastery called The Hermitage. This assembly of buildings was erected by the Franciscan "Brother Jerome" .The first European settlers were...

, the home of many Turks and Caicos islanders who moved there looking for work in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Many Bahamian musicians are from the islands, including The Cooling Waters, Sly Roker, Bradley Dean

Bradley Dean

Bradley Dean is an American stage and screen actor. On March 25, 2008, Dean succeeded Christopher Sieber in the role of Sir Galahad in the musical comedy Spamalot on Broadway. Prior to performing the role on Broadway, Dean played the same role in the show's touring company.Dean has had other...

, Marvin Handfield, Perry Delancy, Leo Jones and Count Bernardino. Many of these expatriates have since returned to Turks and Caicos, bringing with them Bahamian junkanoo

Junkanoo

Junkanoo is a street parade with music, which occurs in many towns across The Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands every Boxing Day , New Year's Day and, more recently, in the summer on the island of Grand Bahama. The largest Junkanoo parade happens in Nassau, the capital...

 music http://www.timespub.tc/Culture/Archive/Fall%202002/ripsaw.htm.

Modern ripsaw pioneers include Tell and the Rakooneers and Lovey Forbes, who created a new style called combina in the early 1980s, using genres from across the Caribbean and the US as inspiration; these included jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, calypso

Calypso music

Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...

, soca

Soca music

Soca is a style of music from Trinidad and Tobago. Soca is a musical development of traditional Trinidadian calypso, through loans from the 1960s onwards from predominantly black popular music....

 and reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 http://www.cariwave.com/willcarson.htm.

Musician institutions

The organization TUCA helps to promote Turks and Caicos folk music and dance. The Turks and Caicos Music and Poetry Festival is a major annual event, attracting such artists as (in 2004) Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan , frequently known as the Queen of Funk, is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career...

, Maxi Priest

Maxi Priest

Max Alfred "Maxi" Priest is a British reggae vocalist of Jamaican descent. He is best known for singing reggae music with a R&B influence, otherwise known as reggae fusion, and became one of the first international successes who regularly dabbled in the genre as well as being one of the most...

, Boyz II Men

Boyz II Men

Boyz II Men is an American R&B vocal group best known for emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies. They are the most successful R&B group of all time, having sold more than albums worldwide. In the 1990s, Boyz II Men found fame on Motown Records as a quartet, but original member Michael McCary...

, Joe

Joe (singer)

Joseph Lewis Thomas , usually credited simply as Joe, is an American R&B singer and record producer.-Early life:Joe is a native of Cuthbert, Georgia and later moved to Opelika, Alabama. The son of two preachers, Joe spent much time in church singing, playing guitar, and even directing the choir...

, Shocking Vibes Band, TCI All Star Band and Blakout Crewhttp://www.blakoutcrew.com http://www.turksandcaicos.tc/music/. The first First Annual Turks & Caicos Ripsaw Festival was held in 2003 http://www.timespub.tc/Culture/Archive/Fall%202002/ripsaw.htm.