The annual Goombay Festival kicks off on Friday with three days of music, food and recognition of the community’s deep Bahamian roots.
It’s Goombay time!
Coconut Grove comes alive this weekend with three days of music, food, and celebration of the area’s Bahamian roots: a rallying cry for a community reclaiming its place in the Grove.
“It’s almost like a safe space,” said Vicky Rivers, the manager of the City of Miami’s Virrick Park and an organizing member of the Goombay Festival. “We can have fun. We can enjoy each other. You can reunite with people you haven’t seen in years. It’s like a big, huge family reunion.”
The festival, founded in 1977, is a cultural and historic link to the Bahamas, where many early Miami settlers hailed from.
Rivers, like many past and present Grove residents, recalls the Goombay Festivals of her childhood with both pride and a dose of nostalgia. Bahamian flags, she said, would appear on lampposts along Grand Avenue signaling Goombay’s pending arrival. The Grove’s Bahamian roots were in full view.
Festivities begin on Friday June 6 at 6 p.m. with a Junkanoo parade – known as a “rush” or “rushout” – from the Miami Dade College Gibson Center at 3629 Grand Avenue to Esther Mae Armbrister Park, where live music and food vendors will be set up.
The event continues on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Grand Avenue between SW 37th Avenue and Elizabeth Street. Traffic will be closed along Grand Avenue throughout the weekend.
Junkanoo rushes will take place at 12 p.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Musical stages — on Grand Avenue at 37th Avenue and at Elizabeth Street — will run non-stop performances by local and Bahamian artists.
Despite the West Grove’s deep Bahamian roots, its cultural identity is fading.
Traditional island-style “shotgun” homes are making way for million-dollar mansions, Bahamian-owned businesses have shuttered and descendants of original residents are being driven out by ever-rising property values, moving to other corners of Miami-Dade.
“It takes out a lot of the Bahamian families, the African-American families, that were here and were so proud to call this their space,” Rivers said. “A lot of them feel like this is just a place for them to lay their head. It doesn’t feel like home to them anymore.”
And that feeling was especially acute from 2014 to 2022 when organizers – challenged by a combination of economics, politics and then Covid – suspended the annual event.
The current chair of the Goombay Committee — vonCarol Kinchens-Williams – led the effort to revive the Goombay Festival.
“ A lot of the comments, text messages, calls that I have received are: ‘Thank you for bringing this back; now my children get an opportunity to see what took place when I was coming up,” Kinchens-Williams said.
The event’s resurrection amid a changing economic landscape and a cascade of new development has made its presence all the more important, Rivers explained.
“To have something as monumental as Goombay still happening, it kind of gives them [Bahamians] a little bit more vibration in them,” Rivers said. “You know, all right, they didn’t take everything away from us. We still have the Goombay.”
Organizers are predicting a crowd of around 20,000 this year, up from last year’s 15,000, but still far short of attendance during Goombay’s heyday in the 1980s.
A part of the draw to Goombay comes from the connection it’s been able to maintain to the Bahamas itself.
This year as many as 10 food vendors and several of the live acts will travel from the Bahamas to participate.
Goombay entertainment chair Carl Springer believes their involvement is vital. “We don’t want to water down the authenticity,” he said.
For Springer, music is the bridge connecting two worlds, be they cultural or generational.
“Those connections and that music is universal,” he said. “That’s what keeps everybody on one accord, the music of the Bahamas, the music of America coming together, you know, being a perfectly blended tune.”
The music lineup features Bahamian performers, Miami-based artists Ball Greezy and DJ Fly Kidd, and old-school artists The Spank Band, Papa Smurf and MamaD.
“That’s the rebound, the revitalization of the old spark. We get to light that candle again,” Springer said.
But nothing compares to the Junkanoo rushouts that are a staple of Bahamian culture.
“It’s absolutely mind blowing,” Kinchens-Williams said.
The performers are all local, wearing mostly homemade costumes and performing dances they learned from watching their family members perform in Goombay Festivals of the past.
One of the Junkanoo performers is so excited he’s invited family from different states to watch. He’s also inviting family from the Bahamas to join him in the rush, Kinchens-Williams shared.
While the Goombay Festival is a celebration of the neighborhood’s past, it’s also promoting a conversation about its future, Kinchens-Williams said, drawing attention to a rapidly disappearing cultural heritage.
“People that have moved away from here are coming back to partake in this festival and seeing what has been left behind,” Kinchens-Williams said, adding that people are asking “What can we do, how can we bring businesses back to Grand Avenue to liven things up once again in Coconut Grove. Besides having the Goombay Festival, what else can we do?”
Aarti Mehta-Kroll, Assistant Director of the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at Florida International University, has been working to document Goombay in Coconut Grove for the Library of Congress. She believes events like Goombay are critical to helping a neighborhood incorporate new residents without losing the history it was built upon.
“As the neighborhood changes, it’s important to have traditions like this that remind people of where it all began,” she said.
Goombay Festival
Three days of food, crafts, Junkanoo parades and live music to celebrate Coconut Grove’s Bahamian Heritage.
Admission is free.
June 6, 2025 – June 8, 2025
Junkanoo Jump-Off:
- Friday 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
- Armbrister Park, 400 Grand Avenue Coconut Grove
- Junkanoo rush begins at the Miami Dade College Gibson Education Center, 3629 Grand Avenue, and leads to Esther Mae Armbrister Park
2025 Miami Bahamas Goombay Festival
- Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Headliner: Keke Wyatt
- Sunday 11 p.m. to 8 p.m. Headliner: Ball Greezy
- Grand Avenue (Douglas Road to Elizabeth Street)
- Junkanoo Rush from Elizabeth Street at 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. and from Douglas Road at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Grand Avenue will be closed beginning on June 7 at 6:00 a.m. and reopen on June 8 at 11:30 p.m.
