By Tom Pryor

It's no secret that the planet is entering a new age of extinction. For over two decades a small army of scientists - biologists, zoologists and climatologists especially - have been sounding that alarm that the one-two punch of habitat loss and global warming could be the death-knell of up to one third of the world's species who could be wiped out by the end of this century.

At the same time, humanity is facing a different kind of extinction event: the loss of cultural diversity and the eradication of indigenous languages and cultures around the world thanks to the relentless homogenizing forces of the globalized economy. In the smaller corners of the world pockets of local culture and speakers of local languages succumb to the siren song of the satellite dish and the call of the Internet, often abandoning centuries-old traditions and native idioms in their headlong rush into post-modernity. Even worse, unique languages are dying out as parents encourage their children to learn the languages of colonization and commerce. Mandarin replaces Tibetan, English replaces Manx and Cornish, and Spanish supplants Quechua. But culture and language can be more resilient than other endangered species. Sometimes all it takes is a committed group of individuals to revive a dying language, sometimes all it takes is an idea.

In Central America, the Garifuna people - an Afro-indigenous group descended from the vestiges of native Carib peoples and escaped African slaves - are fighting a similar battle for cultural survival. The Garifuna people are small in number. Roughly 400,000 people sprinkled in a rough arc across Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as small immigrant communities in the U.S. And fewer still speak the traditional Garifuna language, succumbing to the dominant regional idioms of English and Spanish. The Garifuna have a long history of resistance. According to their oral history, they were descended from a cargo of runaway slaves that escaped from a British slave vessel that ran aground in St. Vincent in the 18th Century. These maroons soon found themselves living and fighting alongside the indigenous people of the island battling a series of European colonial armies to a standstill for decades. Eventually British colonial might prevailed and the Garifuna - known to His Majesty's forces as "Black Caribs" - were transported to Central America in an act of ethnic cleansing. They've been there ever since, and have been fighting to maintain their identity for just as long - and not always successfully. In 2001, UNESCO proclaimed the Garifuna language and culture a "masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity," in recognition of their endangered status. And now the Garifuna have a new secret weapon on their side: a 47-year-old musical visionary named Andy Palacio.

Palacio is a bona fide star at home, and not exactly unknown to international audiences, either. He has been making music since the late 1980s, and first made his mark with a sound called punta rock - a homegrown Belizean dance style that combined Garifuna rhythms with a little reggae, a little R&B and a little rock and roll. Thanks to the patronage of the groundbreaking Belizean label Stonetree records - and forward-thinking label founder Ivan Duran - punta rock became the spearhead of a Belizean cultural renaissance and Palacio became a fixture on the international world music circuit. Several of his original tracks were licensed by the powerhouse Putumayo label for compilation recordings. He's also toured the world and was even named Cultural Ambassador and Deputy Administrator for the Belizean National Institute of Culture and History in 2004. But all of that was just a warm-up for Palacio's latest project: a tour de force of an album called Watina (Cumbancha Records) that abandoned punta rock to dig much deeper into Palacio's Garifuna musical roots.

"Punta rock was threatening the diversity of Garifuna music," Palacio's polished baritone booms down the phone line from a hotel in Slovenia, a stop on his Spring 2007 tour. "I wanted to get away from that a little bit and demonstrate that there is more to the story. Punta rock is Garifuna music, but it's still dance music. I was moving down a road that was becoming increasingly dehumanized and slick, too dependent on synthesizers and keyboards. I wanted to get back to a roots music as nourishment. We have punta rock, but we also have music for the body, the mind and the spirit and I wanted to draw in lesser-known forms of Garifuna music before they disappear.

"The seed for Watina was planted by my producer, Ivan Duran," he continues. "About five years ago we realized that we had said everything there is to say with punta rock - but that there was still a lot of other things that needed saying. Ivan helped me realize that we needed to reach back to the older generation of musicians to move our culture forward."

The project was also midwifed by Jacob Edgar of Cumbancha records, who had first helped put Palacio on the world music map when he was the A&R director for the Putumayo label. "The first time I heard Andy perform back in the '80s, I was amazed," recalls Edgar. "He had whatever it is that real stars have. And when I learned more about his story and the history of the Garifuna, I knew this was a story that I wanted to help tell the world. So I was happy to be in a position all these years later to help bring this extraordinary recording to fruition." (The project has earned Palacio and Duran the prestigious 2007 WOMEX Award, to be presented in late October this year.)

In many ways, Palacio's entire career had led up to this project. He first became interested in celebrating his Garifuna roots while teaching in Northeastern Nicaragua during the Sandinista years. "I was on a teaching exchange program in Nicaragua in the '80s," Andy explains, "and we had arrived in a very remote village. One of the local Sandinista officials told me that there was a man who spoke my language living there. I assumed that he meant English, but when they took met to meet this old man I was astonished to realize that they had meant that he spoke Garifuna! You see, I was only 19, and I didn't really know our history or realize that there were Garifuna communities outside of Belize. Growing up I didn't have a full sense of my identity. People of my father's generation were very eager to assimilate and didn't always pass on all the aspects of our culture. As a young man I always knew that I wasn't a part of the dominant society, and that we had a special legacy that was not taught formally. I became interested in telling our own story from our own perspective. We were always told that our ancestors were savage and rebellious, but we were never told about the genocide that was perpetrated against them. So, after my work in Nicaragua was finished (work that included some of the first recognitions of Garifuna culture in decades, leading Palacio to be interviewed by Radio Sandino and the newspaper Barricada), I knew that I wanted to explore my own heritage further. You could say that Watina is the result of that process."

The project first got underway in 2002, as Palacio and Duran began scouring the Garifuna communities of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala for local musicians who were the repositories of Garifuna lore and traditons. Their search turned up the likes of Paul Nabor - a legendary septuagenarian composer of the soulful parranda style - as well as young guns like Honduran parranda singer Aurelio Martinez, and many more. After a few years, Palacio and Duran assembled their musical dream team in the tiny seaside settlement of Hopkins, where they built a recording studio on-site in a thatched hut. The sessions would last four months, and were marked by a relaxed atmosphere of musical give and take, as several generations of Garifuna musicians representing many different regions and traditions came together to share their musical craft for the first time.

"The spirit of those sessions was truly incredible," Palacio recalls. "It was really moving sometimes. It felt like a historic event, but I tried not to let that interfere with how we made the music. I wanted to take this music out of the libraries and the villages and put it back into the hands of the people. And I couldn't do that if the music wasn't also fun and accessible."

Luckily for Palacio and his listeners, Watina is a lot of fun. The album hits you right away with the relentlessly insistent percussion and bass groove of the title track and doesn't let up until the last song fades. It's a danceable, bass heavy sound that thumps and throbs in all the right places - a distant Carib cousin of reggae that keeps its own rhythm. Sung completely in Garifuna, the album takes on a multitude of topics and introduces a whole new vocabulary of Garifuna styles.

"We drew on a lot of the sacred and ritual music of our people," explains Palacio. "The song 'Weyu Lagri Weyu (Day By Day)' is based on the dugu, which is a kind of ritual healing ceremony among the Garifuna. It's a very old tradition with deep roots that we Garifuna don’t usually perform as popular music. We also reference the dugu in the song 'Amuyengu (In Times To Come),' which is a call to preserve the dugu for the next generation.

"And this is just one style, one strand of the music," he continues. "There is also the arhumani and the beimahani, which are two a cappella vocal traditions that are even more endangered than the dugu. We also perform a song called 'Baba' which was written by a Garifuna songwriter named Adrian Martinez and has become a big favorite in all the Garifuna churches - it's a hymn in our language, and it shows how Garifuna have created their own Christian, ecclesiastical music, too. To be honest, I feel like we only scratched the surface on Watina. I would love to do more with these formats and we're already planning a follow-up release devoted to the music of Garifuna women."

But perhaps the most moving music on Watina is the deeply personal material that Palacio says exemplifies the Garifuna songwriting tradition. "Most Garifuna songs are about very specific things. A lot of our songs are like documents, and relate an individual's retelling of specific events in their lives. So in a sense, we sing our history. On Watina, Paul Nabor sang the song 'Ayo Da (Goodbye, My Dear),' which is a very personal song about how he lost a friend on a fishing trip and had to tell the family that their son had died. At the same time, we have the song 'Aguzuha Niduhenu (My People Have Moved On),' which tells the story of the Garifuna's history as a people. Both songs document real events, and help create a mosaic of our history."

Still, Palacio concedes that some concessions were made for modernity. "Not everything you hear on Watina is strictly authentic," he cautions. "These songs are not like you would hear them performed in a village setting. We used traditional rhythms and instruments - especially the tortoise-shell drums - as the bedrock for these songs, but we were confident enough in our own skills as musicians to arrange them in a very contemporary manner. The guitars, for instance, are much more integrated than what you might hear in a village setting.

"Also," he adds, "Women play a much larger role in Garifuna music in general than they do on the album. The role of women is extremely important in Garifuna music and culture - there are many female composers and lead singers who inspired me on this record."

Yet this savvy, mainly male mix paid off, as the album's material has been a critical success abroad and - even more importantly - a popular success at home.

"You know the reception at home in Belize has been unbelievable," Palacio laughs. "I was afraid I was going to lose my audience, but it was just the contrary! We played a concert at the BLISS Center for the performing arts in Belize City - our only tour stop in Belize - and people really turned out to see us ... two tiers were just packed and we were treated like foreign stars. We were treated like the Rolling Stones! For one moment we were perfect in our own country."

Actually, Palacio and the Garifuna Collective are something close to perfect outside their own country, as well. Caught onstage at a recent gig at New York City's S.O.B.'s, the group powered through a thundering set like the well-oiled touring machine they've become, Palacio commanding the stage with acoustic guitar in hand, an eloquent ringmaster with a mission. While the band is a crack squad of professionals driven by the fluid and fierce guitarwork of Eduardo Cedena and the funky percussion of Rolando Sosa.

"That show in Belize City more than anything really cemented my perception that we had captured the younger audience," Palacio continues. "And it's an endorsement that goes beyond me as an individual. It makes us all feel acknowledged and validated. It gives us all hope and encouragement that our project will succeed in our own country, because this is much bigger than selling records in the U.S. and Europe, This is bigger than touring other countries. This is bigger than making ourselves into stars. This is about survival of our heritage. And if we have captured the young people's imaginations in Belize, and if we have reawakened their interest in our culture, then we have won a very significant victory. Young listeners are filling in the bigger picture they see the international success and attention that we're receiving and that influences them. They want to become aligned with our cause and get involved with cultural preservation and retrieval. I feel a great sense of accomplishment, even if we can't get this generation to embrace Garifuna as their first language. We can still inspire them to teach their own children."

And Palacio's message of Garifuna empowerment is resonating far beyond Belize itself. "Belize is the flagship," Palacio asserts, as he deftly switches from his role as musician to his role a cultural minister, "but this movement goes beyond Belize. The effect is regional: in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. In fact, at the formal state level, there's more going on in Honduras and Guatemala right now. Mario Wellington, a Garifuna, is currently the Vice Minister for Culture in Guatemala, and Aurelio Marinez was recently elevated to the Honduran Congress. So these countries are beginning to catch up with Belize, where we Garifuna are so deeply integrated into the social and political life of the nation. And it's instructive what we Garifuna have accomplished for other minorities, both in Belize where Maya dances and folklife and Creole healing practices are now honored and protected - and throughout the region. Our struggle for survival is linked to theirs. I believe that we can all succeed together if we celebrate and respect our individual identities."

But for all the positive changes that Palacio has seen, he still has one regret. "My one wish is that my father were still alive to witness this," he says wistfully. "He was a musician, too - a harmonica player. But he was more familiar with European music than Garifuna music. He came at music from a British Colonial perspective. He was of that generation whose biggest aspiration was to be awarded an O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire), like Bob Marley. But I think if I was ever offered such an honor, I would have to refuse. I'm much more excited about the future of my people. My father died in 2003, and I think he would have liked to have seen our cultural redemption and joined us on this new journey. He would have liked that quite a lot."