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The Garifuna are the descendents of the West African survivors
of two Spanish slave galleys that sank off the coast of Bequia
near the Caribbean isle of St Vincent in the late 18th century.
They subsequently intermarried with the native Arawak-Carib Indians
who lived in the area and adopted their language as a lingua franca
between the Africans’ own diverse language groups. Space
prohibits describing the complex historical events which led the
Garifuna to settle predominantly in present day Belize. Constituting
7% of the country’s population, they are concentrated primarily
in the towns of Dangriga and Punta Gorda in addition to the villages
of Barranco, Hopkins, Georgetown and Seine Bight.
Although working mainly in the fields of tourism, agriculture,
construction and fishing the Garifuna are also prized as educators.
A large percentage of the teachers in Belize are Garifuna. Indeed
the learned way in which they have faithfully preserved and expanded
upon their unique culture for over 200 years and the desire to
teach the elements of that culture to outsiders is instrumental
to the success of these field recordings, which were mainly recorded
in the homes of the performers between 2002 and 2004 by David
Whitmer.
More than half the disc is devoted to traditional drum and vocal
music which present variations on 6 basic rhythms, the parranda,
the hungu-hungu, the John Canoe, the chakanari, the gunjei, and
the punta, basis for the punta-rock popularised by Belizean Andy
Palacio and rhythm to the so-called Latin dance craze of the early
90’s. Punta is the contemporary dance music of Belize. Even
without bearing in mind that these rough-hewn yet remarkably sophisticated
performances are primarily for dancing, it is easy to be swept
away by the visceral power of the rhythms and the keening vocals.
The music is electrifying and very well recorded although I found
the drums and shakers just a smidgen loud against the chorus.
Included here are examples of some of the most African sounding
music in the new world.
Strangely, it is almost completely devoid of Indian influences
despite the Garifuna language and racial mixture. There are also
haunting examples of women’s a cappella music, leremu egi
which originally accompanied the arduous task of grinding cassava
root to make cassava flour (nowadays they buy bread at the shop)
and abeimahani which is a song of welcome. In a religious context
the abeimahani is used in the introductory phase of the most important
Garifuna ritual, the dugu. Participation in the dugu is considered
the essence of being Garifuna. The ceremony consists of several
days of drumming dancing and singing and functions to cure people
supposedly afflicted by the spirit of a long departed ancestor.
It is interesting to note that many of the possessed are professed
non-believers who as a last resort agree to submit themselves
to the cure, often with surprising results. The third type of
music is also called parranda but is a guitar based ballad form
influenced by latin music. The two excellent parranda selections
are performed by Paul Nabor. The advent of passive electronic
entertainment has meant that the children’s game songs have
all but died out. The two infectious examples here employ Garifuna
rhythms but have a pan-Caribbean melody. With superlative liner
notes and sound quality this selection of field recordings is
essential for anyone interested in the roots of rhythm.
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