-By Michael Stone

Belizeman's Ball
Andy Palacio's new album Wa`tina with the Garifuna Collective is alterting ears to their rich Afro-Caribbean culture.  Michael Stone catches the story.

A handful of field recordings dating to the 1950s were long the only documentation of Central American Garifuna music.  But Andy Palacio - Belize's best-known Garifuna performer, singer-songwriter and cultural preservationist - is working with other traditional artists to bring this singular African Diaspora music to a global audience.

He and the Garifuna Collective will embark on their first international tour in late May with Watina (I Called Out; see fR286), on the Cumbancha label.  The album's compelling mix of stripped-down songs, powerful vocals and dense percussion reflects a decade's work by Palacio, producer Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records (Belize's only recording company) and a coterie of Garifuna artists from coastal Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

I caught up with Andy Palacio, Paul Nabor (at 79, the sly, spry, elder statesman of Garifuna music), Adrian Martinez and producer Ivan Duran in New York City in January 2007, at the Collective's GlobalFest appearance, and spoke with Aurelio Martinez during his autumn 2006 North American tour.

Garifuna music embodies a distinctive cultural history.  In 1635, Spanish ships carrying kidnapped Africans into West Indian slavery were wrecked in the eastern Caribbean off St. Vincent.  Indigenous Carib Indians integrated the survivors as Maroon allies against European colonial forces.  Defeat by the British exiled the Garifuna (or Black Carbis, as they were then known) to the Bay Islands of the Caribbean coast of Honduras in 1797.  They quickly populated this no-man's-land from Nicaragua to Belize, and today number some 350,000.

The Garifuna sustain a proud heritage of resistance, but today their African-Amerindian heritage faces considerable threat.  In 2001, UNESCO's Director-General proclaimed Garifuna language, music and dance to be among the Masterpieces of the Oral & Intangible Heritage of Humanity, stressing the urgency of safeguarding their traditions against mass tourism, expropriation of native lands (hear the song Miami, about a village in Honduras expelled from its native reserve by the military), emigration, and other forces of globalisation.

Garifuna singing and drumming receal palpable West African elements, fiercely percussive, communal call-and-response forms rooted in the sacred context of social commentary, community instruction, ancestral invocations and spirit possession - recalling Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodoun, Jamaican Nyabinghi and Brazilian Candomble.

The Garifuna garaon drum ensemble includes the lead primera (heart drum), the counter rhythmic segunda (shadow drum), and the bass-line tercera (third).  An unusual adaptation involves snares, gut or guitar strings stretched across the drum-head to produce the buzzing resonance favoured in West African musicis.  This lends a brilliant overall sonic denseness, and may deceive the ear as an artefact of electronic distortion.  Other instruments include reed flutes, conch shell horns, turtleshell percussion, bottle percussion, claves, and shakers and scrapers traceable to eastern Caribbean Amerindian music.

Secular genres include paranda and punta.  Spanish for 'carousal', paranda, a ballad form, adds acoustic guitar to Garifuna voice and percussion.  Punta is a couple dance named for its unique rhythm; its distinctive pelvic thrust recalls the vacunao of the CUban rumba guaguanco.

Garifuna culture also has been open to outside influences brought by men's labour migration and a dance-club circuit linking performers, audiences, and repertoires in Caribbean Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's souther Yucatan.  After World War II, popular Mexican, Cuban, Haitian, Jamaican, Colombian, and other Latin American folk elements blended with C&W, R&B, soul and jazz (gleaned from films, international radio broadcasts, and recordings from abroad), mixing easily with native Garifuna styles.

Palacio played in high-school bands, covering a range of popular international music.  Then, drawn by the Nicaraguan revolution, he taught in the Atlantic coast literacy campaign.  He met an old Garifuna man amazed that this youth from Belize spoke Garifuna; the encoutner moved Palacio to a deeper appreciation for his Garifuna heritage.

He returned home to find a renewed sense of Garifuna cultural pride, vividly expressed in punta rock, a popular fusion of native styles with electric guitar and reggae's message of liberation.  Garifuna artist Delvin "Pen" Cayetano's Turtle Shell Band burst on the national scene just as Belize gained independence, and the music's upbeat expression of cultural pride, brotherhood, and mutual respect spilled over to the rest of Caribbean Central America.  The band's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival appearance further encouraged Palacio, who can be heard singing an old paranda with legendary Garifuna singer and drummer Isabel Flores (now deceased), on the 1982 Folkways LP, Traditional Music of the Garifuna of Belize.

In 1987, when Pen Cayetano passed on an invitation to work with Cultural Partnerships Ltd, a London community arts group, Palacio stepped in.  He gained professional experience, a broadend perspective, and connections that led him to Ronnie Graham's Sunrise project, the first to record, document, preserve and distribute Belizean roots music.  This brought invitations to represent Belize at Carifesta (Trinidad and St. Kitts-Nevis), Festival Internacional de la Cultura del Caribe (Mexico), Rainforest World Music Festival (Malaysia), World Traditional Performing Arts Festival (Japan), Antillanse Feesten (Belgium), Womad, London's Commonwealth Institute, and elsewhere in North America, Colombia, France, and Germany.

Two early Stonetree titles ensued.  Recorded mostly in Havana, Keimoun (1995; see fR178) showcased Palacio's vocals and compositions, backed by top Cuban and Belizean artists.  The first CD produced in Belize, Keimoun put the country on the world-music map; The Rough Guide lists it among 100 essential Latin America and the Caribbean recordings.  Palacio returned with Til Da Mawnin (1997; see fR214), an energetic punta dance mix.  But Duran urged him to do something more traditional, evan as Palacio was appointed Cultural Ambassador and Deputy Administrator of the Belize National Institute of Culture and History.  Fortunately, Palacio was listening to the ancestors, tuned in, he says, smiling, to "the living archives of Garifuna oral history".  In the manner of music's critical role throughout the African Diaspora, Palacio and his band mates have become community teachers, social commentators, activists and entertainers, all in one.

Of the title track, Palacio remarks, "It's about someone at the roadside hitching a ride.  Justo Miranda brought the song from Honduras, and we extended it.  It laments, 'Look at this situation, here on the raods of our countries; see how our brother is suffering.  Vehicles just keep passing by without stopping'.  It developed an unusual beat, interesting because it was neither paranda nor anything else, something that we just felt, discovered and polished in the studio."

Another track illustrates the power of oral tradition, technology, and migration, a song's ability to cross great distances, be reinterpreted, and return home transformed.  Palacio relates, "Yagane, the duet with Paul Nabor, is something I wanted to record for a very long time.  I first heard it on a vinyl single, a rough recording made by some Honduran Garifuna musicians in Los Angeles.  I loved it, and made a cassette copy to take home and learn.  But only in the studio did Nabor inform us that Yagane (My Canoe) is actually his composition.  It's about falling from his dugout, calling it back on the waters, unable to swim and fearing he might drown.  Obviously, our father is still with us!  And he's very popular in Los Angeles, where his appearance is the Garifuna music event of the year.  Nabor is a vital figure in our oral tradition, in our festivities, and our spirituality."

Also on Watina is Aurelio Martinez (hear especially his duet with Palacio on Lidan Aban, Together, a call for Garifuna unity, a paranda with an infectious reggae feel). From a fishing village in Caribbean coastal Honduras, Martinez took up his father's guiater, was apprenticed as a sacred dugu drummer, and learned the traditional repertoire from his mother and grandmother, talented singers.  In his late teens he moved to La Ceiba, the Caribbean port, and formed the noted traditional ensemble Lita Ariran.  A teacher of Garifuna culture and tour veteran - Europe, Japan, Central America, Mexico, NOrth America - Martinez brings a bittersweet vocal style to Garifuna song.  Previously heard on Lita Ariran's Songs of the Garifuna (JVC) and the seminal Paranda: Africa in Central America (Stonetree), among younger interpreters Martinez is acknowledged as a soulful, powerfully evocative singer both at home and in New York City, whose Garifuuna community welcomes him as its own.

Aurelio has been featured on Public Radio International's Frontline-The World, and in a Particia Ferreira documentary for Spain's TV Espanola.  His solo debut Garifuna Soul (Stonetree, 2005) impressed AfroPop Worldwide, which named Martinez 'Newcomer of the Year'.  A gregarious figure who loves converation and travel, Aurelio remarks that while his father was absent for most of his childhood, supporting the family with remittances from abroad, "I have a father in every Garifuna village".  His people returned the favour of his enduring engagement and teaching of Garifuna traditions.  Like Palacio, Aurelio also embraces politics, representing the Garifuna in the National Congress, where he also is president of the Commission of Ethnic Peoples, and secretary of the national Cultural Commission.

A sense of tradition likewise inspires Belizean Adrian Martinez (no relation of Aurelio).  His Baba (Father, Ancestor) is a poignant invocation of the ancestors, now commonly sung in Garifuna Sunday services.  It employs the roots hungu-hungu rhythm, accompanied by a trio of booming segunda drums, as in the ritual Garifuna temple.  Martinez relates, "The inspiration came to me one Sunday morning at 2 am.  I couldn't sleep, so I picked up my guitar and it just came out.  To my amazement, I finished singing, went back to bed, and slept well.  When I awoke in the morning I still remembered it, and wrote it down.  Usually, songs that come in the night like that vanish just as quickly."

Like Palacio, Adrian came to his roots via punta rock, joining the Dangriga-based Forever Band as lead singer, and later, Sound City.  A teacher who is completing a BA in English at the University of Belize, Adrian joined the Garifuna All-Stars on their first tour to France (1999).  Today, he says, "Younger punta and dancehall musicians are seeking their roots, and they want to join the Collective.  They see how important it is to take the music seriously.  Watina is the first project I've worked on where every song has a meaning, something more than just 'Let's Party'."

Similarly, Palacio observes, Gaganbadiba (Take Advice) is extraordinary because Lloyd Augustin of the Punta Rebels comes from hardcore punta rock.  It reveals Lloyd's talent, his ability to delve deeply into the soul of Garifuna music.  He makes creative use of the gunjei [song type with a characteristic rhythmic figure] in what is almost a lullaby, an elder counselling a child to behave with dignity and respect, and to look forward to great things later in life."

About the closing track, Palacio notes Amunegu (In Times To Come) came from soul-searching, contemplating the future and pondering the survival of Garifuna culture.  It asks, 'Who will speak Garifuna with me in times to come? Who will sing Arumahani [traditional men's songs] songs with me? Who will heal us with the dugu [spirit possession ceremony-]?  It continues, 'The time has come for these thigns to be taught and preserved, lest we lose them altogether'.  It's a very simple statement that ends with children's voices saying, 'Lest we lost it altogether', and a haunting cello figure.  It still gives me chills when I hear it."  Then he laughs, "We really need people who understand this music, people who can write informed album notes".  Amunegu is a stirring testament to the tenacity of Garifuna culture, its sense of ancestral connection across space and time.

Adrian Martinez: "I'm one who believes in encouraging people on their way in life.  I'm more than certain that people are always seeking ways to sustain community.  Some get it through the music - that's what Watina does, addressing every aspect of life.  I want to pass on something to the younger musicians.  I feel so honoured to be able to work with people like Andy and Paul Nabor.  It's a rare feeling of love, respect and generosity; it gives me a different outlook on music and life.  Without Nabor, it would have taken us 20 years to understand where he has been for so long."

As producer Duran observes, "Stonetree is not about making 'hits'.  I've always strived to make albums that will stand the test of time." Indeed, Watina sets an enduring standard, a pulsin, insistent Caribbean beat in the heart of Central America.

Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective play Liverpool's Africa Oye Festival on 16th-17th June and London's Cargo on 19th June. www.cumbancha.com