There may be nothing to it, but when I first listened to Andy Palacio's new disc I heard an echo of the Tulsa sound made famous by J.J. Cale. Of course Cale was popularised by Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler covers of his songs, but there's something to that clipped Ovation sound that carries over to Andy Palacio's new album. Palacio brought the Punta rock of Belize to the international stage a few years ago, but it owed as much to the techno synth-drenched rock posturing of zouk as to anything authentically homegrown, and he has now gone back to his roots. Garifuna Collective is a group of musicians exploring the traditional music of Belize that was on the verge of extinction. It's laid back and there's an echo of the burru drumming of Jamaica in the beat. The sound on this recording has a modernity to it, and a very accomplished production, so that makes it exactly the kind of thing that gets a lot of play on my system. It's also very different from other Caribbean music. The Garifuna are descendants of African slaves who were shipwrecked off St Vincent in 1635 and and blended into the indigenous Carib community, resisting European colonization (which led to their being exiled to the coast of Central America). Paul Nabor, legendary 75-year-old singer who joined Palacio on the great PARANDA album in 1989, returns for "Ayo da," a song which he wrote 60 years. The melodic simplicity is infused with musical virtuosity and a fine production by Ivan Duran.