Aurelio

In 2005, Aurelio Martinez put his music on hold to step into the Honduran political arena, a move that eventually led to his becoming the country’s first congressman of African descent. But when an old friend and longtime supporter of Martinez’ music died soon thereafter, the rising politician returned to the studio to make an album honoring both his late friend and the music they’d spent their lives promoting – a percussive blend of African and Latin folk styles known as paranda, one of several musical traditions associated with Martinez’ ethnic group, the Garifuna.

The result is Martinez’ first new recording in seven years, Laru Beya, just out in the U.S. on Sub Pop, the label better known for Nirvana’s first recordings than for those of a Central American musical politician. On Laru Beya, Martinez – who goes by his first name, Aurelio – expands on the paranda tradition, bringing in more of an African sensibility with help from such big names in Afropop as Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour and members of the multiethnic Orchestra Baobab.

At the album’s heart, though, is the paranda music of the Garifuna, descendants of a seventeenth century West African slave ship accident near the island of St. Vincent. Many of the Africans, who were never enslaved, escaped, settled on St. Vincent and mixed with the indigenous West Indian Arawaks, creating the Garifuna culture. When the British took control of St. Vincent the following century, they dumped the Garifuna onto the Honduran island of Roatán. The Garifuna eventually made their way to the mainland where communities settled up and down the Caribbean coast, from Belize to Nicaragua. “We had some trouble on St. Vincent with the… er… your people,” Martinez half-joked to London’s Sunday Times in 2009, “and they sent us here.” Since then, the Garifuna have suffered much oppression, and Martinez, through his music, has served as a powerful voice in the struggle to keep his people’s traditions alive.

“We’re not going to let this culture die,” Martinez says in the bio for the new album. “I know I must continue the culture of my grandparents, of my ancestors, and find new ways to express it. Few people know about it, but I adore it, and it’s something I must share with the world.”

In that spirit, we’d like to share Aurelio Martinez with Option’s readers as this week’s “The Artist.”