BELIZE’S ANDY PALACIO dedicated his entire life to preserving Garifuna music, the enchanting music of the black communities of the Central American countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Thanks to Palacio’s efforts, Garifuna music is today regarded as one of the best schools of world music. By the time of his death on January 19, 2008, in Belize city, Palacio, 47, had gained popularity both in Belize and abroad and had performed in the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe and Asia.
He appeared at the Festival Internacional de Cultura del Caribe in Cancun, Carifesta VI in Trinidad and Tobago, Carifesta VII in St. Kitts-Nevis, the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia, the Antillanse Feesten in Belgium, the World Traditional Performing Arts Festival in Japan and other events in the United States, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany and the UK. He started performing in 1988.
In memory of Palacio, leading Garifuna musicians recently toured the US and Europe to celebrate the life and music of a bandleader and songwriter who spearheaded a revival of the unique music of Central America.
They started their performance in New York on April 4, at the Symphony Space, and will visit Atlanta, Miami, and other cities, concluding on August 29 with a performance in Los Angeles. The tour will promote an album titled Watina (“I called out,” in the Garifuna language), released in the US and Canada on February 27 on the new record label Cumbancha. Dates for the European tour are yet to be released.
WATINA, A 12-TRACK album performed by Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, was acclaimed as one of the best world music releases of 2007. It was declared album of the year on the European World Music Charts and won on several other charts the same year. Watina has been described as the soul of Africa, the spirit of the Caribbean and the heartbeat of Central America, resonating to the unique and threatened Garifuna culture.
Palacio was not only revered as the most popular musician in Belize, but was also a serious musical and cultural archivist with a deep commitment to preserving his unique culture. A long time proponent of Garifuna popular music and a tireless advocate for the maintenance of the Garifuna language and traditions, Palacio had undertaken a new and ambitious direction with the formation of the Garifuna Collective band.
Palacio’s passion can be traced to the history of the Garifuna people.
The Garifuna are descendants of West African slaves who were shipwrecked in 1635 off the coast of what is now the island of St Vincent. The survivors were welcomed by the local Arawak and Carib Indian populations, leading to a distinctive Afro-Amerindian culture and language.
Thus began the history of the Garinagu, more widely known as the Garifuna, one of the most unique and threatened cultures in the Americas. Their tale is one of tragedy and adversity, as well as one of triumph, community and hope.
Called the Black Caribs by the British, the Garifuna lived in relative tranquility for many years, their ranks increased by other escaped slaves who heard about this outpost of free Africans.
After siding with the French in a battle over control over St Vincent, however, the Garifuna were defeated by the British in 1797 and exiled to a small island off the coast of Honduras.
Nearly half of the Garifuna population died en route, but 3,000 people survived, and eventually journeyed out to set up small villages on the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Today there are roughly 250,000 Garifuna in the world, including immigrant communities in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami. A small and often oppressed minority in their home countries, the Garifuna have valiantly preserved their heritage over the years in the face of tremendous outside pressures. Recently, however, the forces of globalisation have overwhelmed them, threatening extinction to their unique language, traditions and music.
Fewer children are learning the Garifuna language, performing the songs or memorising the oral histories and stories that serve as the legacy of the culture.
Born and raised in the coastal village of Barranco, Palacio grew up listening to traditional Garifuna music as well as foreign music on radio from neighbouring Honduras, Guatemala, the Caribbean and the United States. He joined local bands while still in high school and began developing his sound, performing covers of popular Caribbean and US Top 40 songs.
However, it was while working with a literacy project on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast in 1980 and discovering that the Garifuna language and culture were steadily dying in that country, that a strong cultural awareness took hold and his approach to music became more defined.
He opted for the language and rhythms of the Garifuna, a unique cultural blend of West African and Carib and Arawak Indian language and heritage. “It was a conscious strategy. I felt that music was an excellent medium to preserve the culture. I saw it as a way of maintaining cultural pride and self esteem, especially in young people,” he said on his record label website.
Palacio became a leading figure in a growing renaissance of young Garifuna intellectuals who were writing poems and songs in their native language. He saw the emergence of an upbeat, popular dance form based on Garifuna rhythms that became known as punta rock and enthusiastically took part in developing the form.
Palacio began performing his own songs and gained stature as a musician and Garifuna artiste. In 1987, he was invited to work in England with Cultural Partnerships Ltd, a community arts organisation, and returned to Belize with new skills and a four track recording system. He helped found Sunrise, an organisation dedicated to preserving, documenting and distributing Belizean music.
Palacio and the Garifuna Collective had been planning an extensive tour of the world this year, and Palacio was looking forward to being accompanied by women from the Umalali project, whose album was released on March, 18 this year.
According to the producers, Umalali musicians blend the rich vocal textures of women from the Garifuna communities with echoes of rock, blues, funk, African, Latin and Caribbean music.
The ongoing tour of the Garifuna musicians — consisting of the Garifuna Collective and three women of Umalali — is promoting the album Watina—Jacob Edgar, president of the record company, Cumbancha, told The EastAfrican: “The album has sold well; it is certainly one of the bestselling world music releases of the past year. It was a struggle at first because few people were familiar with Palacio and his music, but the international media response was tremendous, both before and after his death.”
The idea of the Collective came about five years ago when Belizean producer Ivan Duran, Palacio’s long time collaborator, persuaded Palacio to focus on less commercial forms of Garifuna music. Duran and Palacio set out to create an all-star, multigenerational ensemble of some of the best Garifuna musicians from Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.
The Collective unites elder statesmen such as legendary Garifuna composer Paul Nabor, with up-and-coming voices of the new generation such as Aurelio Martinez from Honduras. Rather than focusing on dance sounds like punta rock, the Collective explores the more soulful side of Garifuna music, such as the Latin-influenced paranda, and the sacred dügü, punta and gunjei rhythms.
THE WORLD TOUR FEATURES Aurelio Martinez, whose album Garifuna Soul was highly praised in the world music press; Adrian Martinez, who sang and composed the moving song Baba from the Watina album and who is a rising young star in Belize; and Lloyd Augustine, one of Belize’s most popular young musicians.
“We have no plans to tour Africa at the moment, although one of the members of the Garifuna Collective will be performing regularly and recording with Youssou N’Dour this year,” said Edgar.
Soon after his death, Palacio was announced winner of the Americas Category in the 2008 BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. Although decided by the jury in December, the official announcement of the winners was not due to be made by the BBC until April 10.
The government of Belize honoured him with the Order of Meritorious Service in September 2007, and in November, he was named a Unesco Artist for Peace.
In his acceptance speech on receiving the 2007 Womex Award, Palacio said: “I see this award not so much as a personal endorsement but in fact as an extraordinary and sincere validation of a concept in which artists such as myself take up the challenge to make music with a high purpose that goes beyond simple entertainment. I accept this award on behalf of my fellow artistes from all over the world with the hope that it will serve to reinforce those sentiments that fuel cultures of resistance and pride in one’s own.” Palacio lived in San Ignacio, Belize, where he was accorded a state burial. He died of respiratory failure after a stroke and heart attack.
