Mar 20/06
Shipwreck Africa
I just spent a wonderful week in Belize. What a great place. Good diving, warm sun and friendly people. They also have great music: I picked up a couple Paranda albums while I was there.
Paranda. The story goes that centuries ago a slave ship crashed off the caribbean island of St. Vincent. The survivers escaped and joined other escaped slaves from nearby islands to form small villages in present-day Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The black African slaves’ languages and blood mixed over time with the local Arawak Indians and Carib. This produced a community of people in the region who speak Garifuna, a mix of several African tongues and Carib. It’s the only language spoken by people of African descent in the Americas that is not derived from European languages.
The Garifuna community is still alive and well today, particularly in southern Belize. This is perhaps best expressed by their unique brand of music. The slaves’ musical heritage mixed with that of their neighbours and colonizers to produce the Paranda sound played by local Paranderos. You’ll hear african drumming, vocals in Garifuna and a light latin/spanish influence.
Stonetree Records in Belize has recorded and released a series of great Paranda albums. In 2000 they released a great compilation of Paranda artists, who include Paul Nabor, 72 years old at the time of recording. He is the local buyei, or religious leader, of his community, and the last living Parandero in Punta Gorda in southern Belize. The comp also features some music by Gabaga Williams. He was one of the greatest Paranda composers of all time and is now too arthritic to play his guitar. Luckily his compositions are played and preserved by guitarist/admirer Dale Guzman of Belize City.
Music from all these guys is featured in today’s post.
West African acoustic mbalax and other forms have a lot in common with Paranda. We’ll explore this a little more later this week with music from Aurelio Martinez. For now, enjoy some classic Paranda courtesy of Stonetree.
Paul Nabor – Naguya nei
Dale Guzman & Gabaga Williams – Tuagu bigidaran
Sounds great, thanks!
Great post! thanks for all this great culture!
Great post, Matt. I can’t wait to read about the paranda-mbalax connection.
Maybe you could do a couple features on other lesser-known African-derived genres in the Americas, like champeta from Colombia or kaseko from Surinam.
To be honest, I don’t know anything about champeta or kaseko – I learn and listen as I go along like anyone else.
So hey, if you have any samples I always love a guest post or music swap.
Cheers,
Matt
I don’t have any champeta, but I did find some kaseko tunes and a bit of historical information online. I’d be happy to share them; just let me know.
Ian
The Garifuna’s language is Arawakan, an Indian language. The only African word in their entire language is mutu, the word for “person” which is also in several creoles in the region.
[...] So Belize used to be known as British Honduras. THAT’s why the national language is English. And one of its major groups include descendents of a boat full of slaves that fell to a disastrous shipwreck. The men escaped to St. Vincent’s Island but eventually made their way to Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. -quote- The black African slaves’ languages and blood mixed over time with the local Arawak Indians and Carib. This produced a community of people in the region who speak Garifuna, a mix of several African tongues and Carib. It’s the only language spoken by people of African descent in the Americas that is not derived from European languages.-unquote-found at http://bennloxo.com/archives/2006/03/20/shipwreck-africa/ [...]
The first part of the story about the shipwreck off St Vincent is correct. However the survivors did not go directly to Belize. They mixed with the native Caribs of that island and developed the Garifuna or Black Carib ciulture. When Europeans tried to colonize St Vincent, the Black Caribs resisted and for many years during the late 1700 and early 1800 they were constantly at war to try to drive out the Brtish settlers. Finally the British had the “rebels” deported to Roatan, an island off Honduras and from there they spread to the mainland.