FRANK MINYAH EUOLGISED

The Banana Boat was a famous music and dance club in New Providence in Over The Hill Nassau from 1967 to the early 1970s.  Frank Minyah came from New York, of Dominican Republic parents, at the invitation in 1959 of the late Dame Doris Johnson to film the suffragette movement in which she was involved.  He stayed first running the Cat and the Fiddle owned by Freddie Munnings, father of Ray Munnings of the Beginning of the End Fame.  He bought the  club owned by Teddy Foster and Andrew Conliffe and renamed it the Banana Boat. He helped to develop  and support the political and musical personalities, and  Bahamian groups like Tony Seymour’s band and the political elites like Lynden Pindling.  It was a redoubt on Saturday and Friday nights for upwardly mobile young black people. So much was the  memory of its influence that the Banana Boat Reunion Group was formed by businesswomen Pat Mortimer to get the old crew together to dance the hully gully.  Mr. Minyah would come to the reunions, he was also engaged in the Bahamian community’s activities in New York where he returned to live.  Mr. Minyah died in March at the age of 89.  There was a service of celebration at Riverside Church in New York on Wednesday 26 April 2023.  The Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell went and spoke on behalf of the government of The Bahamas.