|
|
 |
Garifuna culture springs to life in Palacio’s songs
|
| Click Here to go back. |
Boston Herald, Garifuna culture springs to life in Palacio’s songs >>
by Bob Young
A boat forced ashore by stormy Caribbean seas off the Central America coast would change Andy Palacio’s life -- and provide world music lovers with an unlikely new hero.
Palacio, a 46-year-old native of Belize, is the deputy administrator of Belize’s National Institute of Culture and History. But outside of the tiny, English-speaking Central American country (the former British Honduras), he’s known as the singer and guitarist who has made it his life’s work to champion the little known Afro-Amerindian culture of the Garifuna people.
Palacio has revived the music of the Garifuna so compellingly that his new CD, "Watina," is one of the most talked about CDs of the year. His North American tour with his Garifuna Collective -- which comes Wednesday to the courtyard at the Museum of Fine Arts -- is leaving concert-goers coast to coast buzzing about this sweetly rhythmic Caribbean sound.
But none of this would be happening if Palacio hadn’t gotten off that boat and visited a small coastal village in Nicaragua more than 25 years ago.
"I was part of (Belize’s) national literary campaign," Palacio recalled by phone from Belize. "I was on my way to the village of Orinoco when threatening weather caused the captain to detour to a lagoon that my colleagues told me had a village with a Garifuna man like yourself.
"When I met him and said in Garifuna, ’How are you, uncle?,’ he was completely surprised, which surprised me. I can vividly remember him saying, ’Is this really true?’ He was an elderly gentleman who probably hadn’t spoken Garifuna for many many decades.
"I had come face-to-face with the reality that this was indeed practically the end of the Garifuna culture in Nicaragua. And I saw it bearing down very fast on the Garifuna of Belize."
Garifuna culture got its start in 1635 when two ships filled with West African slaves-to-be sank near the island of St. Vincent. The surivors intermingled with the native Arawak population, giving birth to the Garifuna. Today, there are fewer than a half-million Garifuna scattered around the world and no more than 20,000 in Belize, which has a population of 300,000.
Garifuna culture, Palacio feels, can stay alive by spreading its music near and far. But not just any Garifuna music.
After devoting years to performing Belize’s Garifuna punta rock, a party music with the uptempo kick of soca and merengue, Palacio went back in time and stripped down the electronics to capture what he calls the richness and values of the culture’s music.
So while the loping, infectious rhythms that course through the guitar-heavy "Watina" definitely make you want to dance, they also carry messages sung in Garifuna about spirituality, survival and modern-day issues such as over-development.
"This is a great beginning," Palacio said. "But the beginning never stops. It’s been like rediscovering ourselves all over again."
Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $25; 617-369-3306 or www.mfa.org.
07/31/07 >> go there
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
