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Interview
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Afropop Worldwide, Interview >>
Afropop Worldwide’s Sean Barlow caught up with Aurelio Martinez after his performance at the 2006 Puertas de las Americas Festival in Mexico City, Mexico. Aurelio speaks on the traditional music styles and cultural identity of the Garifuna people, his music and on being a Congressman. Aurelio Martinez’s album Garifuna Soul (Stonetree Records) is representative of a new generation of Garifuna musicians striving to preserve the Paranda music tradition with a new style coined Punta Rock in the Honduras.
Interview with Aurelio Martinez
2006 Puertas de las Americas Festival in Mexico
Transcribed and translated by Marlon Bishop
Sean Barlow: Welcome to Afropop Worldwide, Aurelio.
Aurelio Martinez: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be able to be part of your program. Really, an enormous pleasure to promote me people’s music, the think I most enjoy doing.
SB: How to you say your name?
AM: My name is Aurelio Martinez Suaso. I am from a small community in Honduras called Plaplaya, which is part of the Atlántida province on the coast of Honduras, whose capital is La Ceiba. Actually, now I’m spending time a little in La Ceiba and a little in the capital of Honduras, because I’m currently serving in the National Congress.
SB: Tell us your story. How did you begin in music? What are the highlights of your musical career? Start at the beginning.
AM: In the village I was born, there is still no electricity. It’s a very small community really. When I was a child, I didn’t have electronic toys, I had very natural toys. My first toy was a guitar I built for myself from wood taken from a fishing rod. So that’s how I played my first chords. My grandfather was a musician. My uncles as well. They had an acoustic group in the village. They were my first music teachers, my family. My mother sings, my dad plays the guitar in the paranda style. At 8 years old I played as a percussionist in the community and I was drawn in the garifuna tradition. So the older people would include me as a percussionist in their concerts and this is how I came to learn about garifuna music. At 14 I left the village. I was already an esteemed percussionist. My uncles would have me sing. I went to La Ceiba for secondary school. After only one year of secondary I already found myself in an orchestra, where my cousin was playing, that played on the professional level. I started singing and playing percussion with them. That’s how I evolved as a musician, taking private music classes with teachers, to develop my musical understanding a little. But we never strayed from the tradition.
I started a garifuna music and dance group called Litaridan. We recorded a disc of traditional music that was a label called the Jotavece de japon with my friend Akiro Tomita. This is the first garifuna CD that entered the world, in that you can buy it on the internet. It was the first disc that could appear on the internet f you looked for garifuna music. It’s called Sonidos Garifunos en el Mundo with the group Garifuna Litaridan. We continued evolving. I participated in various groups on the cultural level - I was with the Guia Mandrazon. Commercial music like Gatos Bravos which is one of the biggest orchestras in Honduras and Central America. Also I did contemporary music, a little bit of theatre. The artistic question was that…. that we could enter into this circle of situations, but always held true to my roots. We always brought our traditions to whatever commercial job.
People came to know us first through Andy Palacios. Andy is a Belizian friend of mine who put together a big festival in Honduras in celebration of the 200 years of Garifuna history in Central America. Artists from all over Central America came, so I met Andy there. He is a great friend, a great Belizean artist, and he has made a great effort to bring to the Garifuna music to the foreground. He worked with Punta rock and paranda, producing Pala Bor, which was the first paranda CD that made a great impact on the global level. And as a consequence, we’ve worked with Ivan Duran on his projects such as “La Casa Izqueirda.” I met him through Andy. We began working with the concept of “Garifuna soul.” And this has transcended to the global level, and of course this project is always changing. We hope it has important repercussions on the global level.
SB: Andy Palacio, I’ve talked to him, he’s a wonderful guy. So you worked with commercial groups as well as more traditional music?
Translator: He worked with Punta Rock, which is a dance band that was one of the most popular bands in Honduras. And he was the lead singer of that band.
SB: You have records?
AM: Yes, a few. We went to some important festival in the United States also, like Calle Ocho in Miami. We went to some festivals in Washington. We did some important things. I had the opportunity to work with artists Cecila Cruz, Johnny Ventura, Oscar DeLeon, and Grupo Niche. We were able to interchange ideas with them. But back then Aurelio Martinez was not a solo artist; Aurelio Martinez is part of a band, working within the idea of a commercial orchestra. Its something we do, really, to survive, because promoting traditional Garifuna music is a slower process, it has a smaller audience, people who want to listen to something different. Especially in my country, Honduras. People know me more as part of Punta Rock. Really, it’s a new concept. In my country, the Garifuna community is well-known as is our music, we can share it with other people. But in the world it’s a new concept that we are trying to push through efforts of people who care about the music. But garifuna music is a big genre; we have gunchei, punta, paranda, abaimajani. There are garifuna rhythms that are all really different. Each one of them is something that needs to be promoted on the international level.
SB: Can you demonstrate those different rhythms with your hands?
AM: Alright. People know about a commercial version of punta. In the world, generally, the commercial punta rhythm that people know is not punta for the garifunas, although it originally came from garifuna rhythms. Its gulyo – the basic rhythm is… (plays). The traditional punta is different, the dance and the rhythm, which is…. (plays). Originally they didn’t play it with a drum, but with a wooden box, with cans, and with the palm of the hand like… (claps). Only the women dance it. They dance it around a bonfire. It’s a song to fertility, a fertility dance. When a brother dies, another must be born to take his place. It’s a fertility song, a fertility dance. From this, we have changed it into a commercialized punta. But really, it’s a different rhythm that. The original punta, you dance around the bonfire. The woman does a sensual dance around the flames. I believe that the world doesn’t know this.
SB: Wait one second. What was that one you just did?
AM: This is gulyo (plays), which is actually the basis for the commercial punta. And the traditional Garifuna punta is (plays). Which is very different, no? And the dance is also different. In the punta one can raise themselves up, dance on the toes, while the traditional garifuna punta is only the woman dancing and their feet flat on the ground and they just go forward, little by little. And dipping the waist down. There aren’t any fast or strong movements, only contained movements, lower ones. With flexion of the knee and the waist. More than anything, the waist goes down.
We have another rhythm called gunchei. (plays) This is gunchei. We have another called paranda which is simpler. (plays) It’s played on two drums, the tambor primero (first drum) and tambor segundo (second drum). The segunda is the bass, it’s the larger one and the primera is smaller and accompanies the redoblando or requinto, which is the smallest drum. This is how Garifuna drums are divided. If we’re going to play punta, I know that the punta basis is this (plays). That’s what you play on the segunda. (plays faster) This is the primera. This is more or less the traditional punta. (plays) And we go to the commercial punta (plays). So the rhythms change, and the primera drum changes as well.
So I think we’ve played basically all the rhythms. There is also acapella singing, for example abaijamani which a female singing genre and oujamani is male singing. (sings long example)
This is a men’s song. A little after they leave to go work, they meet up and hold hands to together, 5 or 6 men sing together. They talk about women, about what happens during the day, in a way that they can all share.
SB: Can you sing again, because the machine was overloading.
AG: (sings example again.) They are songs of the old men of the village, not songs of young people, but songs of the elders that get together. They can’t dance anymore and can’t do all sorts of things but can still sing and hold hand in the afternoon. They get together so that they can share and talk about anecdotes, speak of situations that happen, talk about women, which is really the best conversation that exists. It’s basically a form of sharing for the elders.
SB: That’s great that’s beautiful. How do the women sing?
AG: Ehhh. I don’t have anything in my head. My mom has many songs… Men’s songs are called oumajani, and women’s songs are called abaimajani. (Sings) This is woman’s song. They hold hands. They begin to work in the morning here and there, and really it’s very… When we do wakes … After someone passes away, we do a mass. The mass happens at a church, and usually after the church everybody goes to a house, we do a memorial, and this moment we sing these types of songs.
SB: When you sing in Garifuna, it’s like no other language I’ve ever heard. Can you tell us the story of the Garifuna and how you came to be and how the language came to be?
AM: Ok, that’s a good question. In the past, black Africans were brought to America and other parts of the world to be turned into slaves. Some boats that came, one from Nigeria, and another from a different part of Africa, became shipwrecked, by coincidence. The people had to stay in San Vicente, an island in the Lesser Antilles. They lived there for a long time, mixing with the Caribbean Indians, the Arawaks. And that’s how the Garifano came about – a mix between black African and Caribbean Indian. There they lived for many years. However, the English and the French wanted their lands, and fought against the Garifunas for many years. There is a dance called the “guerrera” dance (war dance), which is a form of representation of how the Garifunas fought against the English and the French. They went after the men, right? They didn’t kill the women, they perused the men. The men disguised themselves with masks and attacked. The war dance is Jancunuu. But this is only a parenthesis. Let’s return to the story.
The mixing of the Garifuna happened in San Vicente. After many years of struggle they were deported when the English won the battles in San Vicente. They deported them to the sea, and they reached the island of Punta Gorda in Honduras. That was the first community that was founded. Later they crossed towards the north coast of Honduras which is Trujillo, La Ceiba, and San Pedro, all of the north coast. From there they went to Belize, to Guatemala, to Nicaragua, which are the places where Garifunas live. They kept with them many African elements, like their drums. We have our maternal religious practices, called gugú. We have our food - the cassava, machuga, and tapado - many foods. We have our music, our dances, our forms of living together. Really, there is nothing like it, although really every day we are being culturally inundated by Western culture, by way of television and everything. But really, the Garifuna culture still lives, and it’s still a culture that can be exported and that must be protected. We have been declared Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO. I think this is important – that the world knows this culture, and that we all protect it as if it were all of ours, like a world culture. We are people that really like to life in peace, very sociable people, and a very open culture. Our music isn’t private intellectual property, all the compositions are communal. But now, with the new system that exists now, we have begun to promote our culture and our music towards the world, towards the exterior.
SB: That’s good. And Garifuna identity is strong. Your people have a community no matter where they live. Your Garifuna identity is stronger than your Honduran, or Belize, or Guatemalan identity. Is that true?
AM: Garifuna identity, more than others, is the most exportable part of Central American culture. The Garifuna is the strongest thing that Central America has if you’re looking for a cultural identity on the level of dance, the level of music. I think it’s the strongest that we have. Really, it’s the African root that prevails in the worlds in every place that we look for an identity that can be danced – like salsa, merengue. All of that is Africa. I believe that the strongest Central American identity is the Garifuna culture. Honduras is a very multicultural place - we have Miskito, Pech, Mayas in Belizes – many indigenous communities. And really, every one of them has their rhythm, like the marimba from Guatemala. There are many things that we could talk about, but the strongest right now are our Garifuna roots. In that we can find in it a collective identity for Central Americans.
SB: Why don’t we move on to your album? Choose two or three songs and tell us about them.
AM: Sure. In our composition for this album, we have tried to change certain things in the concept of Garifuna song. Garifuna song is always tragic in content. We are always talking about problems with our communities, problems of one woman with her neighbor. To not fight, it’s better to say whats on your mind through a song of batchutadas, an indirect way. Say you do something that annoys me, I don’t like it but I confront it in an indirect way, through music. And we have utilized this same concept in all of our music, always the same schemes, the same methodology in Garifuna music. I’m trying to move it away from that, to orient our community towards development. This song, number 9, “Lumala Lumaniga”, “The voice that quiets the silence.” It’s a song that we did because there are times that the leaders get used to acting more important than the community. If not leaders, the stars that are on the covers of the newspapers, those who stand in front of the community in every aspect while the children continue bearing hunger and cold. There are organizations that obtain funds for development, and really only 5 or 6 people get these funds, and use them to increase their salaries, or just never do things that actually reach the community. So, this song asks these organizations to be much more conscientious with how they work as an organization. That the leaders are more conscientious. That they shouldn’t be people who pretend to represent something they really don’t; only representing themselves. Rather, people that can develop some project for the community. Our music is going more that direction. To be a song made up out of anecdotes that asks a question that can really reorient people’s conduct. Not only from within the community to the outside world, but from outside to the inside as well. The Garifuna community is struggling right now over land. Big transnational companies are trying to seize the land of the Garifunas to develop tourism. But Garifunas center their lives around these beaches. They are attacking the communities, buying them out in a way. The government is contributing, siding with the big investors, without taking a second to think about the cultural consequences, about our community, that we have lived here forever. I am trying to send messages that inform the general population but that are also directed at my people, so that we can protect ourselves.
The music, “Lumaniga” more than the others, reflects this. “Yalifo”, number 7, portrays a child - not necessarily from the Garifuna community, it doesn’t matter what community it is. There is a terrible phenomenon that the United States in involved in, because your immigration laws are very strong. Many people from all countries in Central America, in Latin American want to enter to the United States for the “American dream.” Their children become abandoned in back home, when they are very young. This song is about a child who is seated in Hopkins, looking at the sea, missing his father, and he says to a pelican, “Lend me your wings so I can find my father. Papa, where are you? I want to find myself with you, I really miss you. The evening arrives, and I can’t find you.” It’s the dream of a child and really wants to find his father, wants to find this paternal part, and can reflect on what he can see with other children that he wants to see in his father. They are very deep songs in their content. This is why I like paranda, because through the paranda I can go towards this child, who I was also. My father also left us for the American dream; I finally met my father in the United States when I was 23 years old. This is part of my life as well.
They are really special songs. “Santo Negro,” number 1, which is one of your favorites. It’s a song that… at times, as humans, we still see race. We see skin color, the little differences between people. And discrimination is not just about color, also about class. The song is about this man sitting thinking about why Jesus Christ was white. Wondering why the savior was white any everything black is bad. And he wants to be a “black saint”, so that blacks too can be pardoned, so that his situation of his life can change as well. It’s a song to equality, a song to what humanity should be, one people created by one god.
We can continue talking about this CD, it’s goes very deep. I think it reflects a lot about how we live together in these communities. For example, track 6, “Cuando Yo Muera” (“When I Die”). We, in death… don’t think that we celebrate death, but we do celebrate life. Because when someone dies, someone else one is born. This guy, in the song, when he dies, he wants them to sing his favorite song.
These are questions of life, common currents that are happening in the communities, and this is reflected in all of my songs. In the questions and situations of daily life, especially the social problems that face my community. But when we take a look outside to the rest of the word we realize that almost everyone is dealing with the same stuff.
SB: Can you play a little guitar for us?
AM: (plays guitar and sings) Thank you. There are so many things I could say to world about garifuna music. I hope that every day we continue to learn about this culture. That for many, those who listen to this program, that it is something new. The world is waiting to be refreshed. We invite you to refresh it Garifuna music. We will be trying in these years, playing in cities around the world, to promote this music, to show that it comes from a special place. This is process of my life, as a person, as a politician now. I have to pause some things now for this historic moment in the community I live - in 209 years there has not been a Garifuna or black congressman in my departamento (county). It’s been a struggle. I hope to achieve some dialogue. We’re not going to let this culture die. My number 1 ambition is to continue with this culture of my grandparents, of my ancestors, to continue teaching the world about it. Few people know about it, but I love it, I adore it, and it’s the greatest part of my life. Thank you so much for the program, and the space you’re giving us to be able to be here tell the world that in Honduras, in Central America, this culture exists. Good people, people with a special ability to love fellow human beings, without thinking of questions of race or religion. This culture throws all of that away. It wants to be with everyone. We hope that people open their doors and their hearts for Garifuna Soul, within it is all the music and the culture of the Garifuna.
SB: What does it mean to you to be the first ever Garifuna to have been elected to congress from your area.
AM: First – for me as a musician, from the artistic angle- it’s an honor. A true honor. Whites, blacks, and all those who we see in the province and the country recognize the value of artistic work, because I’m not there for my political experience. Politics is not my strong suit, rather projection of social realities through music. People have identified with me and given me their respect for that. This means, to me, that Aurelio Martinez has done something for this country, raising the Honduran flag for this culture in the world, and that the community recognizes that I am a contributor, that I contribute to the education and orientation of my people for the united struggle for our rights. That has to do with the personal angle. For the political side, to show to the children of my community that this is possible, that young Garifunas feel that anything is possible, in whatever country, that we can participate politically. Its important that we can ignite the struggle, without thinking that somebody is going to discriminate against us. I believe that anything is possible when one truly recognizes their rights. This also helps the self-esteem of our people, of our race. And not just the garifunas, the amerindians, who live in Honduras – there are 9 indigenous communities in Honduras – that really still don’t have any representation in the governmental system in the country. This hasn’t happened because they feel disempowered. Really nobody can defend the interests of a community like a member of the community. Nobody can fight for a community like us who understand the idiosyncrasies and needs of our communities.
I think that more than anything, this is an example who all of those who think its not possible to enter politics, that they also can do it. They can do it to defend the interests of their people. As for me, I’m not that interested in the political aspect, to be a big-shot politician because I’m not a beaurocrat. (laughs) But of course, beaurocracy is how nations are managed. One has to make decisions that drown people or raise them up. I want to defend my people in the national congress.
SB: Congratulations.
AM: Thank you. We hope to have all the international cooperation in that we in the east don’t want to drive the entire budget, but we do need to channel funds so that they really arrive at the people who need them. We are looking for strategic alliances with our fellow artists around the world, so that we can develop some kind of an economy that can support a Garifuna community, especially in Honduras, or any place in Central America. We are also a good channel, a contact for artists, also a good contact for organizing a social development for these forgotten communities. There are Peches, Mezquitos, Tahwakas, there are Maya in Belize - so many ethnic groups that need a lot of support, because they still live in sub-human conditions – limited education, limited health care. I, too, have dreams, like Martin Luther King had, I have dreams to achieve a way to help my people.
Translator: Aurelio for president!
(all laugh)
SB: And you can write you own campaign song too! Lets finish with one more song.
AM: (plays “Lumala Lumaniga”)
SB: Thank you!
AM: It’s a pleasure. Truly content and thankful to have the privilege to be in front of this microphone and this program, before the audience that your prestigious program has. Honduras, Central America to the world. 12/12/06 >> go there
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