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As the motivating force behind a decade-long string of superb projects documenting the soulful music of Caribbean Central America’s Garifuna people, Belizean record producer and musician Ivan Duran is no lightweight when it comes to staying true to the culture while looking keenly to the future. When he founded the Stonetree label more than a decade ago, his mission was to bring the African-Amerindian music of the region to a world-class level—a journey that went stratospheric last year with Andy Palacio’s multiple award-winning album Wátina. Now that Garifuna music has hit the world stage, Duran has turned his discerning ear to yet another aspect of the sound with a captivating new recording by the Garifuna Women’s Project.
“I didn’t set out to do an anthropological or ethnographic album on Garifuna women in Central America,” he clarifies. “We were seeking striking songs to develop, but with a contemporary twist. To me, this is the best chance we actually have to preserve the culture. If we can engage young Garifuna by making the traditional somehow modern, cool and accessible, we might just show them that people outside the community, internationally, recognize and value Garifuna culture. We see that happening already with the success of Wátina.”
Showcasing three generations of stunning female singers from Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, the Stonetree/Cumbancha release Umalali (the Garifuna word for “voice”) celebrates women as the cohesive force in Garifuna social, cultural, and spiritual life. Not only does the album highlight their vocal artistry, but it reveals them to be captivating storytellers whose poignant, lyrical narratives address the everyday struggle to preserve family, household, community, and the Garifuna way of life in a rapidly globalizing world.
Buoyed by powerful fronting voices with a palpable West African and Amerindian flavor, Umalali documents a fiercely percussive call-and response oral tradition devoted to social commentary and folk stories—a tradition that’s rooted in the sacred system of ancestral connections. Garifuna women’s music is profoundly contemporary in scope, but at the same time, it draws much of its energy from enduring rituals similar to other New World African spirit-possession traditions in Cuba, Haiti, Louisiana, Jamaica, Brazil, and elsewhere.
“My initial contact with Garifuna women singers came when I did Andy Palacio’s first album Keimoun in 1995,” Duran says, also citing two albums he produced with Lugua and the Larubeya Drummers (1998’s Bumari) and the legendary Paul Nabor (1999’s Paranda). “All these projects had women singing backup with extraordinary voices, remarkable tonality and lots of character. In Garifuna music, backing vocals are fundamental. There is a lot of call-and-response, and the response is as important as the call. But I also noticed that women seemed to know many more songs than men did, and they are very interested in the actual sound quality, while men take a more pragmatic approach, treating music-making as more of a business.”
That difference complicated the task of Duran, Palacio and their Umalali collaborators—among them gifted arranger and multi-instrumentalist Rolando “Chichiman” Sosa, and Duran’s wife, documentary filmmaker Katia Paradis, whose video work appears on the enhanced CD.
“Even though the women were being paid well to record, money was never really the issue,” Duran explains. “For them, there was no relationship between time and money. Trying to schedule studio time, they would often say, ‘I simply cannot do it.’ They have family to care for, kids coming home from school, cooking, washing, marketing, gardening, animals to tend. Meanwhile, the men were always hanging, drinking beer on the studio veranda. ‘You need more time? Not a problem, man!’”
Cultural arrangements like these have meant that Garifuna women have largely been confined to being backup vocalists, although a few have gone on to become legitimate female stars with commercial appeal. The late Lady Lard (born Leocardia Bernárdez Ruíz Mariano in Dangriga, Belize) established a firm legacy as “the Mahalia Jackson of Garifuna,” while more recently, Honduran singer Paula Castillo has developed an enthusiastic Garifuna following in New York.
“I came to see something really special about women in Garifuna culture,” Duran explains. “First, music is an integral part of their everyday life. As a woman, you grow up with it, you learn songs from your family, you sing to your kids, you sing with other women as you work, or at wakes or in the temple. You pass on songs to your daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. You just develop a broader repertoire.
“But maybe more importantly,” he continues, “Garifuna women are the bearers of family history and cultural traditions. They have their feet on the ground, literally. That’s a basic difference, because the men traditionally go fishing at sea all day, or work abroad and send money to their families. Women are responsible for sustaining daily life at home, from sunup to day’s end.”
As he soaked up more of the music, Duran began to realize that he had the makings of a fascinating new project. “I thought, ‘There is some incredible material here,’” he recalls. “Their a cappella singing really moved me—it’s basically melodies, no drumming, no guitars, and no vocal harmony. As a producer, that gives you a lot of freedom, and there’s nothing better than having a great melody to build on! And the women were very flexible about reshaping songs from their own lives. Their attitude was, ‘Hey, you like it? Take it!’ So Umalali was a producer’s dream project. From the start, I didn’t feel any particular burden to be ‘authentic,’ or to document the music simply to preserve a pure traditional form.”
Ironically, Duran’s observations about the flexibility and freedom behind the making of Umalali ended up mirroring some of the same cultural and aesthetic values that are inherent in Garifuna women’s traditional abaimahani singing. From an “authentic” point of view, abaimahani has a sacred character women say that songs sometimes come in dreams, and often from the ancestors. With themes of personal suffering and loss, human tragedy, natural disaster, and the like, abaimahani serves to instruct the young, to cure the sick, to remember the departed, and to convey news to the community. The women sway and gesture together in a line, their hands linked by clasping one another’s thumbs as they sing in unison and repeat core abaimahani phrases again and again.
But Garifuna women also sing abaimahani outside the ritual setting. Singers will pass their own original songs on to the younger female generation, while others may “borrow” them without objection, with the authorship being commonly acknowledged. In this way, abaimahani has become a living Garifuna oral tradition, spreading popular songs and their variants widely through family and social networks.
Duran’s first recording trip through coastal Honduras, Guatemala and Belize in 1997 confirmed this. “We noticed that many of the songs were cropping up with different lyrics, but with the same or similar melodies,” Duran says. “Certainly, I thought it was important to document all the songs and preserve them for future generations. But Umalali is more about the stories, about these women’s lives today— capturing the essence of their voices, while putting them in a contemporary context. I was seeking songs that can be appreciated for the voices and for their melodic value.”
As for whether Umalali qualifi es as a “pure” representation of Garifuna music, in Duran’s opinion the concern doesn’t even merit a second thought. “The era of preservation is over,” he says. “Now it’s time to move the music forward. When you go to a Garifuna cultural celebration in Central America today, there are more Garifuna with cameras than foreign journalists or tourists. Everybody has a handicam, a digital camera and a cell phone. They’re taking pictures, texting, calling friends and family in the United States—that is the culture now, and to me, the music has to reflect that reality. That’s what Umalali seeks to achieve.”
In his role as artistic liaison between Duran and the Garifuna women singers, as well as in his own experience as a globe-trotting singing star, Andy Palacio has made similar discoveries. “Music is a powerful means to preserve the culture,” he points out. “Our songs are narratives and images from everyday life that we carry inside ourselves. Songs are the living archives of the Garifuna nation. The music allows us to speak amongst ourselves and with coming generations about our life experiences and the things that concern us as a people and as human beings. The music has really broken down cultural barriers, such that young Central Americans who are not Garifuna can now identify with this African- Amerindian minority tradition.”
Accordingly, Palacio’s Wátina album closes with “Amuñegü,” which has become a Garifuna anthem of sorts. “It came from some soul-searching I was doing,” he explains, “looking into the future and asking fundamental questions about the preservation and survival of Garifuna culture. It asks, ‘Who will speak with me in Garifuna in times to come? Who will perform the dances? Who will lead us in the sacred dügü [ritual]?’ And it says, ‘The time has come for these things to be taught and preserved, lest we lose them altogether.’”
The threat to Garifuna culture has actually been recognized with an UNESCO declaration that ranks the region’s language, music, and dance among the intangible cultural treasures of humanity. (The organization also recently named Andy Palacio a UNESCO Artist For Peace.) But like any tradition-based community that faces the problems of a hypermodern era—some of which include the decline in native language speakers, international migration, expropriation of land for tourism development, drug-trade violence, alcoholism, and HIV-AIDS—the Garifuna people are finding ways to adapt. Umalali is part of that journey, confirming and advancing the vitality of Garifuna expressive culture.
So who are the women at the project’s core? Sofia Blanco (here dressed in orange) is a widely recognized singer and the arguable guiding force behind Umalali. A grandmother in her fifties from the Garifuna town of Livingston (Labuga) in Guatemala, she comes from several generations of singers. Her husband, Goyo Blanco, is a songwriter who, unusual among the Garifuna, has sung with his wife for over 30 years. Sofia met Duran in 1997 when she sang at Paul Nabor’s temple in southern Belize Duran considers to her to be his biggest discovery.
“One day Sofi a sang ‘Nibari’ for me on the veranda,” he says, recalling how he first heard the opening track for the album. “She said, ‘You know, Goyo wrote this song.’ He was sitting right next to her, and they started singing it as a duet. And I thought, ‘This could be a truly fine song if she slows it down—it has this really soulful vibe.’ I asked Chichi [Rolando Sosa] to play the drums and come up with a rhythm, and we created the arrangement.”
Sofia also composed “Yündüha Weyu” (“The Sun Is Gone”), based on her hospital stay after a miscarriage—“three days and nights of pain” during which she was cared for by her family, whom she thanks with her song. A straight paranda rhythm, it features a lovely acoustic guitar solo by “Guayo” Cedeño (who was also an instrumental mainstay on Wátina). “I tried to infuse it with a Latin touch,” Duran says, “like a Mexican bolero guitarist—totally intentional, given that Sofia is from Guatemala.”
Continuing the family tradition, Sofia and Goyo Blanco’s daughter Silvia sings on “Barübana Yagien” (“Take Me Away”), a soukous-inflected lover’s plea with lyrics—“Take me away from here, my brother / Give me some luck / Give me some life…” —that reflect the song’s innocence. “It has that childlike quality,” Duran observes. “Silvia is in her mid-thirties, but she sounds like a 12-year-old, with an amazing high voice like her mom, and she knows dozens and dozens of songs. Guayo added that great guitar—an old Japanese model with four pickups, really cheap-sounding, like the West African bands of the golden age.” Silvia also sings lead on “Fuleisei” (“Favors”), which conjures up strains of Arabic flamenco vocals and Malian guitar.
In her late twenties, Desere Diego (dressed in red and holding shakers) is the youngest singer in the troupe, but she’s intensely committed to sustaining Garifuna roots music. Her distinctive high-pitched voice is widely sought for ritual dügü ceremonies around southern Belize. The dügü is an elaborate round of sacred singing (by women), drumming (by men), dancing, and feasting that is set into motion when ancestral spirits visit the Garifuna in their dreams. The ritual cycle is underwritten and orchestrated by women, who are understood to be most closely attuned to the spirit realm. The drums summon the ancestors to visit and enjoy themselves as the spirits possess particular participants. Through the healing medium of possession, the ancestors treat the afflicted and instruct the community at large.
That flavor comes through with Desere’s lead on “Mérua,” which is sung with Marcela “Chela” Torres and features Andy Palacio on vocal harmony, backed by the towering Garifuna garaon drum ensemble. Named after a little mountain near Chela’s coastal Honduran village, “Mérua” is a captivating work chant that is sung repeatedly when hauling fishing boats from the water or thatching a house roof.
Marcela Torres also invests “Anaha Ya” (“Here I Am”) with her intense, driving voice—the perfect counterpoint to the gritty backing of Rosa Bermudez, the booming Garifuna drums, and the muted bass line with slash-and-burn fuzz guitar. Following that is Elodia Nolberto’s “Tuguchili Elia,” another percussive punta rock rhythm with a chunky electric guitar. The track is a stirring testimony to Nolberto’s power as yet another singer in high demand at dügü ceremonies in southern Belize.
Among the other standouts on Umalali there is “Hattie”—a lashing chronicle named for the hurricane that devastated Belize in 1961. Sarita Martinez, one of many who could barely spare time to record, is joined by Desere on this hypnotic, straight-ahead paranda by Sarita’s aunt Perfecta Lewis. “Uruwei” (“The King”) is a languid, bluesy vehicle for Bernadine Flores, the grand-niece of renowned Garifuna drummer, singer and spiritual teacher Isabel Flores (now deceased). Damiana Guitiérrez joins in on this haunting song—written by Flores’s grandmother—whose unison vocals came from Duran’s original 1997 field trip.
“The track just jumped out at me,” he later recalled. “I started fooling around with a cheap mic on my little 1950s Sears amp and an old Telecaster, recorded straight to my laptop. It was late at night, and I had to play the guitar really softly, so as not to bother the neighbors or Katia, who was sleeping. I layered in the slide, electric, and acoustic we recorded the drum later. Then I dropped in the ocean sound, and the hammock creaking on my veranda. It’s a night track. I wanted to give the sense of those old Lomax blues recordings. You’re in the living room with just people playing—a sense of intimacy in the Garifuna soundscape.”
Closing the album is “Lirun Biganute,” a song of mourning composed by Julia Lewis for her son, a police officer killed in a brawl at a dance in Duran’s hometown. “It’s a very sad song that really struck home with me,” Duran says. “Here I was, all the way to Hopkins [in Belize] to record a tragedy that happened in my hometown. I played it with her and made a couple of guitar chord changes. It’s an exquisite song with no drums—just guitar and her voice.”
For Duran, the song is a fitting closer to an album that, for him, captures the most intimate, poignant and ultimately defining elements of Garifuna culture. “Ending the album this way, it brings you back to what the whole project is really about,” he says. “It’s a woman sitting in her living room, singing a song. A woman sings to commemorate her son’s death, marking an important moment in her life, and that gets immortalized. What’s more powerful than that? That’s how a song might live forever. Not just through recordings, but with people passing on their songs. And that is how Garifuna music will survive. Sure, there’s some instrumentation, but you’re not hearing that. You’re hearing a voice, like on the radio—lingering, alone, this fragile woman’s voice. The only way Garifuna music will die is if people stop feeling the need to express themselves and commune through music.”
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