The author says that this is ‘an account of the deep roots, the multiple routes, and the creative approaches to representation that have defined Bahamian musical life since the 1950s’ (p. 264). And that's what it is and more, including historical backgrounds, Bahamian music in interaction with Caribbean and US musics, politics, policies – or rather lack of policies – and tourism. Since the Bahamas is a large archipelago with many islands there has also been a lot of interaction between local music styles in the different islands where Nassau has been the centre of meeting and melting. There have been both centrifugal and centripetal forces at play on many levels. The focus of the text is on developments and adaptations of three kinds of music – Goombay, Rake-n-scrape and Junkanoo. Goombay is rooted in Bahamian versions of the pan-Caribbean quadrille traditions. In the 1960s the name Goombay started to mean nightclub music where goombay drum (a frame drum with goat skin) was used and the original Goombay was now renamed Rake-n-scrape. A long chapter is devoted to the journey of the Christmas masquerade Junkanoo, with its noisy music from a contested slave tradition to a national symbol in independent Bahamas. There are also accounts of the contributions of individual musicians and bands, including the only Bahamian act that has made it into the international scene, The Baha Men.

The roots are treated at length, which means that the book to a large extent is about traditional music and not only about popular music. It was mainly rhythmical patterns that were transferred from Bahamian traditional music to popular music, the bell beat of Junkanoo called ‘kalik’ and the scraper rhythm played on a saw in Rake-n-scrape. This is illustrated with a number of transcriptions of recorded music. The melodic content in Bahamian popular music draws mainly on Caribbean and US musics. The Northern part of the Bahamas is very close to the USA. US tourists have been very influential in shaping the popular music scene in the Bahamas since the boom years during the prohibition period in the US. Rommen's account of the interplay between tourism and Bahamian popular music is excellent. It shows that the popular music scene became dependent on tourism to the extent that after the tourist streams took other routes from the 1980s the live popular music scene in the Bahamas gradually disappeared to become almost non-existent in the 2000s. The local population is not big enough to support a popular music scene. A contributing factor is probably that, unlike Caribbean islands such as Jamaica and Trinidad, the Bahamas don't have large expatriate communities in the US, Canada and the UK that can constitute a market for popular music ‘from home’.

Today there are a few musicians in the Bahamas that play ‘roots music’ versions of Rake-n-scrape. But the Junkanoo is bigger than ever, with a music that is gradually changing and showing all signs of a living, however festivalised, tradition. Rommen puts quite a lot of effort into proving that Junkanoo has sacred African roots. He returns to this several times in the book. The participants in Junkanoo deny any spiritual connections. They say it is only for fun. Rommen's main argument for the spiritual roots of Junkanoo is that the participants in Junkanoo can experience ecstatic feelings, a state called ‘runnin’ hot’. I am sceptical of this line of reasoning. Such feelings can also be experienced in a lot of other music contexts, e.g. by dancers at a disco or rave party, where there is no sacred connection. I would rather call the ‘runnin’ hot’ feelings a case of the psychosomatic phenomenon that is called ‘flow’.

Since Rommen (Reference Rommen2007) has written a book on gospel music in Trinidad I am surprised that he has not included the church music scene in the description of itineraries of Bahamian music. He mentions in a footnote that some musicians got jobs in the churches when the number of tourists visiting clubs dwindled. It would have been interesting to get at least a brief account of the interplay or lack of interplay of popular music and the music used in the churches in the Bahamas.

Funky Nassau gives an insider perspective on the complex routes and representations in Bahamian music before and after independence. Through many quotations from interviews and other sources the voice of Bahamian musicians and cultural activists is present throughout the book. Through these accounts, Rommen reveals Bahamian roots in local popular music that cannot be discovered by an outsider. Rommen combines this insider perspective with a mapping of cultural and political economies and the itineraries of Bahamian music in space, time and mind. The methods applied in this study can be used as a model by anyone who aims at a holistic description of complex developments in local or regional music and music life.