UNESCO Recognized Garifuna Music of Central America

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio looks at the musical storytelling of the Garifuna peoples of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, focusing on their ancestry, culture and collective memory.

Transcript

"Once upon a time..." - as all terrible stories begin - except that this isn’t a terrible story, but a part of the inescapable history of the slave trade that reached the Americas all so long ago, but which continues to have its history felt. This little section of that story, though, involves the Garifuna.

It’s the story of a slave ship which was wrecked near the Caribbean island of St.Vincent, from which African men and women survived, and - alongside escaped slaves from other islands - made home on the island for generations. They mixed with native communities, particularly the native Carib and Arawak, and out of that history emerged the Garifuna language, to date one of the only languages in the Americas, spoken by communities of African descent, which is not derived from a European language. 

In 1797, the British exiled the entire Garifuna population away from St. Vincent and to the mainland of Central America, mostly Honduras, in order to make room for more tobacco and sugar cane plantations. Since then, the Garifuna have moved across the region, and now inhabit rural communities in Belize, Guatemala as well as Honduras. And life in these communities is always accompanied by a unique musical sound, that of Garifuna music.

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That was Hamari and Titiman Flores. 

Garifuna music - often split in the high-tempo Punta and the slower, guitar-based Paranda, remain central to the historic storytelling of the Garifuna peoples, focusing on their ancestry, culture and collective memory. Key figures include Ivan Duran, Gil Abarbanel, Andy Palacio, Paul Nabor, Pen Cayetano, The Garifuna Collective, and Aurelio Martinez - and production house Stonetree Records has been at the center of recording many of these voices, and bringing them to new audiences over the last generation. In 2001, UNESCO recognized the language, dance and music of the Garifuna as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. 

Here is the classic Náguya Nei by Paul Nabor. 

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It’s  incredible music, and well worth seeking out. There’s a Stonetree Records album called Paranda, which is a good place to start, and if you ever get a chance to catch the Garifuna Collective live, you won’t regret it… Here they are, playing out….