Strictly Love

Ripsaw is a traditional dance-music style from the Turks and Caicos Islands whose hallmark is the musical use of a common handsaw. The player flexes the saw to change its pitch and timbre while scraping it with a metal rod, knife, or file to create a bright, buzzing lead voice. Bands typically combine the handsaw with goatskin frame drums, box (home‑made) guitar, concertina or accordion, triangle, and sometimes maracas or scrub board. The repertoire accompanies community dances and celebrations and sits in the wider Afro‑Caribbean family alongside Jamaican mento and Bahamian rake‑and‑scrape, with steady, lilting two‑step and quadrille-derived grooves. The music is buoyant and social—built around call-and-response singing, simple diatonic harmonies, and catchy syncopated patterns that keep dancers moving for hours.