Music at Turks and Caicos Islands
The national music is called Rip-Saw music. Another name for this type of music is 'Rake 'n' Scrape'. The basic instruments used are the saw, the goatskin drum, the hand accordion, also known locally as the Constentina, hand made maracas and the acoustic guitar.
The main instrument is the ordinary carpenters' handsaw found in any hardware store. The saw is held with either end in a number of ways to produce a bend in the center of the blade. A metal scraper, usually a long nail, a fork or knife or a screwdriver, is raked and scraped over the teeth of the saw to produce a unique percussive scraping sound. This action is called Ripping the Saw. Bending the body and ripping the saw in time with the beat of the music produces a wobbled overtone. This gives the characteristic sound of Rip-Saw music.
Modern Rip-Saw 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, calypso, soca and reggae.
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