In 2008, Andy Palacio unexpectedly passed away. He was only 48. Just a year earlier, he had released an album called Wátina, which brought the music of his Garifuna people to its widest-ever audience. His death left a hole-- the culture of his people had lost its most prominent ambassador, as well as its most important modernizer. Palacio worked hard to bring the traditional music and stories he grew up with to a wider audience, and in the process, he updated the music, mixing the traditional elements with modern arrangements and production. The Garifuna have no country of their own-- they're an isolated, underserved minority in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua-- and as a result, their culture, a mix of African and native Caribbean influences that traces back to the wreck of a slave ship off the island of St. Vincent centuries ago, is always in danger of being swallowed up by the larger cultures of the nations they're scattered across.
On Laru Beya, Aurelio Martinez picks up Palacio's baton and runs with it. Martinez has served his people's interests in other ways in the past-- he was a congressman in the Honduran legislature for several years, and the first Honduran legislator of African descent-- but Palacio's death convinced him that he should commit to music as a way to spread his people's story. He appeared twice on Wátina, but here he takes the helm, and if Palacio changed the scope of what Garifuna music could be, Martinez seems intent on inserting it into the mainstream of global music. He has spent time in Senegal, studying with Youssou N'Dour, and N'Dour appears on the album along with other Senegalese musicians, including members of Orchestra Baobab and hip-hop group Sen Kumpe.
N'Dour sings with Martinez on album opener "Lubara Wanwa", and the kinship in their vocal styles is striking. The modern relationship between Caribbean and West African singing styles, born of centuries of complex interaction, is well-known, but it's interesting to hear it put so blatantly on display. Martinez himself has a weathered tenor that easily handles the rapid ups and downs of his melodies. Every song on the album has a traditional Garifuna beat as a foundation, but from there, the songs can go just about anywhere. Horn sections, guests singers, and small choirs, electric guitars, keyboards, and bass all make appearances, and the net result is an album that feels very much in the spirit of recent efforts by Manu Chao and Amadou & Mariam, records that build off the music of specific places to create an overall sound that's essentially placeless.
Placelessness actually becomes a theme on the album, too, particularly on "Yurumei". Yurumei is the Garifuna word for St. Vincent, the island across the Caribbean from the current Garifuna homeland where their culture originally arose. That's where the slave ship wrecked and the survivors mingled with the local population-- they came to live on the east coast of Central America after they were violently expelled by the British, who then colonized St. Vincent themselves. Palacio sang about it, too, and that melancholy, nostalgic sense of loss seems to be a thread running through the music. Martinez may not be able to right the wrongs of the past, but he does Palacio's legacy proud on Laru Beya. And by bringing this music to a world stage, he may also help secure his people's cultural future.
