Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective

"Wátina" Cumbancha

By-Gifford

3 ½ stars

The story of the Garifuna people is one of the more unique tales of the New World. They originated in the 1600s when shipwrecked African slaves mixed with Caribbean natives to form a new culture that has survived on the Central American coast to this day. Andy Palacio has long played Garifuna-influenced dance pop but has switched over to the beautiful simplicity of traditional music and enlisted some of the culture's best musicians to join him. In the process, he extracts a fresh youthfulness in the traditional sound that renders the music effortlessly contemporary.

Airy electric guitar lines swell and soothe as drummers, clappers and several other percussionists lay down rhythms that, deceptively, seem like the work of fewer hands. These rhythms and the choral call-and-response of the songs hearken straight back to Africa. The drum-and-voice track "Yagane" is great, and the drummers break it down nicely on "Águyuha Nidúheñu." But the wonderful guitar parts reveal tropical island playfulness, as on the joyous track "Lidan Aban," or deep human longing, as on the closer "Ámeuyengü," and show this music to be yet another great style from the Caribbean.