Triangle or Onion?

Bermuda’s gombeys are dancers and drummers who practice a unique mumming/masquerade tradition. Though they have seldom received scholarly attention, gombeys now serve as a central symbol of Bermudian identity, even usurping the onion, the island’s signature crop—though Bermuda remains better known among outsiders as the tip of a supernatural triangle. In this article I examine various facets of the gombey tradition including drumming, dancing, masking, and mumming from my Caribbeanist perspective. I compare current Bermudian practice with historical data and related Caribbean traditions in order to consider what each can show about creative creolization and cultural convergence over the course of Bermudian and Caribbean history. In particular, I unpack the ways in which Bermudian gombeys have recently employed performance as a way of reconnecting with distant relatives among the North American Pequot tribe. As aesthetic forms from different cultural sources have converged and accrued new layers of meaning, much like the Bermudian onion, the gombey tradition can also be a way of expanding the triangle, making an aperture through which the historic interplay of the Black and Red Atlantics can be perceived.