Website: http://www.stonetreerecords.com

Aurelio Martinez

Garifuna singer, composer and guitarist Aurelio Martinez grew up in a small fishing village on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, taking up his father's guitar, apprenticing as a sacred dÔø?gÔø? drummer, and learning the traditional repertoire from his grandmother, a talented singer. He moved in his late teens to the port of La Ceiba, where he formed the noted traditional Garifuna ensemble Lita Ariran.

A veteran of tours in Europe, Japan, Central America, Mexico, Canada and the United States (he enjoys a tremendous following in the Garifuna community of New York City), Martinez brings a bittersweet vocal style to the guitar-accompanied paranda ballad and other traditional Garifuna song forms. Previously heard on Songs of the Garifuna (JVC) and the critically acclaimed Paranda: Africa in Central America (Stonetree Records), Martinez, one of the youngest paranda interpreters, is recognized among Garifuna at home and abroad as a soulful, powerfully evocative singer.

With a growing international profile, Martnez has been featured by the PBS's Frontline-The World and he is the subject of a film documentary on Garifuna culture directed by Patricia Ferreira, soon to be aired on TV EspaÔø?ola, the Spanish network. Garifuna Soul, Martinez's solo debut album, recently captured the attention of AfroPop Worldwide, which named him "Newcomer of the Year." Backed by some of Belize's best studio musiciansÔø?who improvise adeptly on Garifuna drums and turtle-shell percussion, saxophone, acoustic and electric guitars, and bassÔø?MartÔø?nez takes Garifuna music into the future without compromising the cultural foundations of his inspiration. No hype or derivative artifice, just contemporary roots music true to its hybrid cultural origins, minus the misrepresentations and commercial excess that characterize so much of whatÔø?s on offer in the global music souk these days.

Representing the AtlÔø?ntida coast region of Honduras, a Garifuna enclave, Aurelio MartÔø?nez also is an elected deputy (diputado) in the National Congress of Honduras, where he holds additional posts as President of the Commission of Ethnic Peoples (ComisiÔø?n de Etnias) and Secretary of the Cultural Commission (ComisiÔø?n de Cultura).

Garifuna Music

The Garifuna are a minority African-Amerindian ethnic group of Central AmericaÔø?s Caribbean coast zone, living in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize.

Aurelio MartÔø?nez is arguably the foremost international cultural representative of a people whose unique cultural heritage remains under considerable threat. In 2001 the Director-General of UNESCO proclaimed the Garifuna language, music and dance to be one of the Masterpieces of the Oral & Intangible Heritage of Humanity. UNESCOÔø?s proclamation highlighted the distinctive value of the Garifuna cultural heritage, while also underlining its vulnerabilityÔø?particularly in the face of cultural tourism, encroachment upon native lands and other forces of globalizationÔø?and recognizing the urgency of taking action to safeguard Garifuna culture.

With its dense percussive array and emphasis on vocal artistry, the music of the Garifuna people is unlike any other in Central America (or, indeed, in the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America). Garifuna popular music is rooted in the sacred practices of spirit-possession associated with the Garifuna dÔø?gÔø? ritual, which shows cultural kinship with spirit-possession practices documented in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad and Brazil, all with West African cultural roots.

Although Garifuna musicians began taking their music north to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other U.S. cities in a postwar emigration process that took off after 1965, a sole field recording made in the early 1950s was long its only recorded documentation. The past 15 years, however, have produced a number of new recordings on small labels, gaining the attention of The Rough Guide to World Music, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, and the world-music press and concert touring circuits in Europe and North America.

The above reprinted with permission from Michael Stone, Executive Director, Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton University (copyright 2006)