From Shelly Culbertson : "I asked Page about this when I interviewed him in Arcata; he told me that it is pronounced 'junta', not 'hunta', because it is a friend's nickname [former manager Ben Reed "Junta" Hunter, who co-founded Dionysian with John Paluska] & doesn't have anything to do with South American governments." That's JUNe-tuh (ta as in pasTA) or JOON-tah, not JUHN-ta and not HOON-ta, because that's the way Ben pronounced it. Mike pronounces it JOON-tuh, as in this interview soundclip. (Thanks to Jeff .) But Trey, for instance, has pronounced it JUHN-tuh. Jamie Sachs emailed 10/25/96 to say, "A long time ago, before Phish was the great huge success that they are now, they didn't have a whole lot of people to do all of their stuff for them: like record their Hotline message. 'We still have plenty copies of JUHN TA and Lawn boy' as stated by trey." To confuse things more, a New England newspaper used "Punta" when reporting on the 12-31-93 show.

However, Yenke Rhoda A Dellecave posted 4/23/96 that "in Spanish Junta is a form of a word meaning together." And when "Hempphreak" "looked up the word 'junta' in the dictionary the definition read something to the effect of 'a group of people brought together for a common purpose' and another definition of 'junta' was a small group which has taken power after a revolution'. Now i know that Page said that junta was a friends nickname but anyone in their right mind would not publicly admit to plotting a revolution (which Phish is quite capable of starting) because they would never be successful in their revolutionary actions." 

See also, reviews and sound clips from Music Boulevard.

"Well, you pay a lot of money for engineers and people in the studio who have their agenda and your music kind of ends up getting filtered. ... Junta is the closest thing that you'll hear to us feeling no pressure.""
-- Trey Anastasio to Addicted to Noise, c. 6/95"