Mar 26/06
Spreads like a lovely wildfire
I find traces and hard evidence of West African muscial influence pretty much everywhere I travel. Tiken Jah cocktail bars in Palestine, Serere taxi drivers in Argentina, Wolof hiphop fans and Burundian dance parties in Canada, not to forget the frequent concerts, cultural events and random encounters in my current home, France.
I mentioned in my last post that there are a lot of similarities between Paranda, an African-Carib-Spanish fusion music played by the Garifuna-speaking people in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, and the music of many contemporary West African musicians, notably those in the acoustic mbalax scene in Senegal.
When I first listened to Aurelio Martinez I immediately thought, “Pape & Cheikh”. Acoustic mbalax musicians such as these guys, Cheikh Lô and others from Senegal and nearby West African countries, use “latin” guitar techniques fused with local rhytms played on West African traditional drums such as djembe and tama. Their singing style is similar to Paranda, too. Something about Garifuna – most likely its West African language roots – gives it a rough-edged quality similar to Wolof that makes it sound great to my ear when sung.
Anyway, I’m not going to dive into a big study of musical and linguistical crossovers, mostly because I know little about them. What I do know is that Aurelio Martinez’s 2004 album, Garifuna Soul, is a must-have if you’re into this sound, whether you’re hearing it in Dakar or Punta Rosa. His album and many other great Belize releases can be found over at Stonetree records. You can also buy it and much of the other music you hear at this site over at Calabash.
Aurelio Martinez appears on that Paranda album I posted last time. He represents the younger generation of Parandero musicians. He still lives and records in his native Honduras where a good-sized community of Garifuna continue to live, speak their language and play their cool music.
I’ve posted a couple contemporary Senegalese acoustic mbalax tunes from Cheikh Lô and Pape et Cheikh to give you an idea of why Paranda strikes me as “so Dakar”.
Aurelio Martinez – Nuwerun
Pape & Cheikh – Kamalemba
Aurelio Martinez – Nirau Hagabu
Cheikh Lô – Dokandeme
Is “pandera” another name for “paranda”? I ask because I have an album of paranda music featuring artists like Aurelio Martinez, Paul Nabor and others. I particularly like Paul Nabor who is from Belize I think. As far as I’ve been able to dig into Garifuna history, the origins possibly lie in Nigeria (though the provenance is uncertain, some histories simply say West Africa). A ship full of slaves from there was shipwrecked near St Vincent Island. They made it ashore and intermarried with the local Carib population. Later on when there was the probability that they would be re-enslaved they fled from the island to the coast of Central America, specifically Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. More than that I don’t know other than that a tutor at the college where I work is studying the Garifuna language.
lovely
Ah, just discovered your earlier link in which you say all of the above. My apologies for repetition.
Ha – you’re right, Paranda. Can you tell I was little tired while writing that last post? Thanks, it’s been corrected.
Lovely tunes. I discovered only yesterday that Cheikh Lö is going to perform in my home town Stockholm in May. Lucky me.
this is eye-opening stuff, in many ways. thanks for your work.
Your excellent site never fails to delight and instruct me at the same time.
Wonderful stuff. The music is also very similar in style to the “Bomba” music of southern Puerto Rico, which has its roots in West Africa as well, being brought over by the slaves that worked the cane plantations…
I posted a short (and kinda lousy) video of Bomba being performed in Ponce last month: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LMfUbR37Zr4
…at least it’ll give an idea of the similarities.
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Thanks for all the beautiful music. Living in San Francisco, I have a lot of great record stores where I can find all sorts of African music, but you always seem to post stuff that is not available here. Any thoughts on Toma Sidibe?
I plan to start posting music on my food blog soon.
peace
Never heard of Toma Sidibe.. up for a guest post?
And I’m all for food blogs.
I’d be honored to do a guest post.
hey!
[...] islands are nowhere near Africa, but hey, neither are Belize or Colombia. Plus they do share something in common with many African islands: good music, [...]