Biography
More than a decade earlier, white Belizian Ivan Duran launched Stonetree Records to capture the sounds of the Garifuna, one of Central America’s overlooked minorities. The Garifuna trace their origins to Africans who survived a slave-shipwreck off Saint Vincent in 1635; that island had already been seized by Kalipuna invaders from mainland South America, who had eliminated the resident Arawak men and taken their women. Spanish colonizers labeled the Kalipuna-Arawak population Caribe, the term that later named the Caribbean. After the two wrecked vessels reached shore, surviving Africans and Natives intermarried and fused their traditions, giving rise to the Garifuna. Colonial authorities repeatedly attempted to enslave or expel this independent population of Black Indians until the survivors were finally relocated to present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Belize along the Mosquito Coast. UNESCO has since designated Garifuna music and culture as endangered elements of humanity’s intangible heritage. Their language mixes Arawak, French, Yoruba, Bantu, Swahili, English, and Spanish, while their customs blend African, Catholic, and Native American strands; despite centuries of marginalization, the culture retains strong echoes of both ancestral Native practices and African rhythmic roots.
Born in Belize, Duran took up guitar during adolescence and later pursued formal classical and jazz studies in Mexico, Spain, and Cuba at the Escuela Nacional de Música. Returning in 1993, he began collaborating with Andy Palacio, Belize’s most prominent musician. When Palacio proved unable to record locally, Duran founded Stonetree Records. The label has documented Creole, Maya, and Garifuna artists alike, yet it was Palacio’s 2007 album Watina, licensed to Cumbancha Records, that carried the imprint worldwide; the release topped numerous international world-music charts and brought unprecedented attention to Garifuna music and culture. While working with successive Garifuna musicians, Duran observed that women hired mainly as backup vocalists often possessed far deeper knowledge of traditional repertoire than their male counterparts, whose work frequently incorporated outside commercial influences. These women, he concluded, served as the community’s primary culture bearers, and the songs they performed—whether longstanding or newly created, ceremonial or secular—carried vital messages for the Garifuna people. Following more than ten years of research and with Palacio’s assistance, Duran assembled the recordings that became the Garifuna Women’s Project, naming the collective Umalali, the Garifuna word for “voice.”
Duran approached the sessions without any intention of freezing tradition in place. Garifuna communities themselves do not divide music into folk versus popular or ancestral versus modern categories; identical melodies appear with new lyrics, and the same texts recur with altered melodies, throughout the Mosquito Coast. Palacio recruited a backing ensemble that fused Trinidadian soca, Jamaican reggae, and Cuban rhythms with contemporary punta rock and the primal Afro-Amerindian foundations already present. The women selected for the project reflect the breadth of Garifuna expression: Sofia Blanco of Livingston, Guatemala, descends from a longstanding line of female singers and frequently performs alongside her husband Goyo, her style recalling Malian women’s vocal traditions; her daughter Silvia Blanco preserves numerous traditional pieces while also writing her own material. Belizean ceremonial singer Desere Diego invokes ancestral spirits and maintains an extensive secular repertoire. Marcela Torres represents Honduras, while Rosa Bermudez, Sarita Martinez, and Elodia Nolberto hail from southern Belize. Bernadine Flores belongs to a musical lineage as the grand-niece of the late Isabel Flores, a noted drummer, singer, and spiritual teacher. Julia Lewis also participated.
Several of these artists had been scheduled to join Palacio on a global tour celebrating Watina’s success, yet the singer suffered a fatal heart attack in January 2008, suspending further activity.
Born in Belize, Duran took up guitar during adolescence and later pursued formal classical and jazz studies in Mexico, Spain, and Cuba at the Escuela Nacional de Música. Returning in 1993, he began collaborating with Andy Palacio, Belize’s most prominent musician. When Palacio proved unable to record locally, Duran founded Stonetree Records. The label has documented Creole, Maya, and Garifuna artists alike, yet it was Palacio’s 2007 album Watina, licensed to Cumbancha Records, that carried the imprint worldwide; the release topped numerous international world-music charts and brought unprecedented attention to Garifuna music and culture. While working with successive Garifuna musicians, Duran observed that women hired mainly as backup vocalists often possessed far deeper knowledge of traditional repertoire than their male counterparts, whose work frequently incorporated outside commercial influences. These women, he concluded, served as the community’s primary culture bearers, and the songs they performed—whether longstanding or newly created, ceremonial or secular—carried vital messages for the Garifuna people. Following more than ten years of research and with Palacio’s assistance, Duran assembled the recordings that became the Garifuna Women’s Project, naming the collective Umalali, the Garifuna word for “voice.”
Duran approached the sessions without any intention of freezing tradition in place. Garifuna communities themselves do not divide music into folk versus popular or ancestral versus modern categories; identical melodies appear with new lyrics, and the same texts recur with altered melodies, throughout the Mosquito Coast. Palacio recruited a backing ensemble that fused Trinidadian soca, Jamaican reggae, and Cuban rhythms with contemporary punta rock and the primal Afro-Amerindian foundations already present. The women selected for the project reflect the breadth of Garifuna expression: Sofia Blanco of Livingston, Guatemala, descends from a longstanding line of female singers and frequently performs alongside her husband Goyo, her style recalling Malian women’s vocal traditions; her daughter Silvia Blanco preserves numerous traditional pieces while also writing her own material. Belizean ceremonial singer Desere Diego invokes ancestral spirits and maintains an extensive secular repertoire. Marcela Torres represents Honduras, while Rosa Bermudez, Sarita Martinez, and Elodia Nolberto hail from southern Belize. Bernadine Flores belongs to a musical lineage as the grand-niece of the late Isabel Flores, a noted drummer, singer, and spiritual teacher. Julia Lewis also participated.
Several of these artists had been scheduled to join Palacio on a global tour celebrating Watina’s success, yet the singer suffered a fatal heart attack in January 2008, suspending further activity.
Albums
