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The Mopan and Kekchi Maya of southern Belize, and the Afro-Amerindian Garifuna of the Caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala and Honduras share in the experience of seeing local farming, forest and marine habitats degraded by overuse, tourism and multinational extractive enterprises. Since World War II this has enforced a process of labor migration that in turn has given rise to vibrant transnational ethnic communities based simultaneously in Central America and the United States. Unprecedented social, economic and political changes impinge upon the viability of indigenous languages, material culture and expressive traditions, and the folk musics of Caribbean Central America thus give vital expression to how these changes have impacted the lives of the region's native inhabitants.

Travelers in southern Mexico and Central America cannot miss the ubiquitous marimba, a West African-derived xylophone-like instrument assimilated by both Maya and Ladino groups (the latter are culturally hybrid Spanish-Amerindian or Mestizo, and Spanish-speaking). The marimba figures prominently in folk musics of Mexico and Central America, and is the centerpiece of much contemporary Maya music. Paradoxically, the marimba also has become Guatemala's national instrument, an ironic development given the ruling Ladino minority's 500-year genocidal policy toward the majority Maya population.

Photo credit: Michael Stone Photo credit: Michael Stone

The marimba, harp, drum and flute music, and the associated dances and rituals of the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica are not particularly well documented, although some archival and contemporary recordings do exist. This relative lack of attention is remarkable in light of archaeological evidence documenting cultural continuity in the material culture of Maya music traditions from at least the late Classic Period (A. D. 600-900). For instance, grave goods excavated from two aristocratic Maya tombs at Pacbitun, in western Belize, included a drum, composite flute-maracas, flutes and anthropomorphic and animal-figurine ocarinas. Indeed, Maya wind and string instruments, drums, rattles, shakers and raspers have been widely documented throughout the region from the Classic Period into the present. Pre-European Mayan instruments still in use include drums, flutes, ocarinas, whistles, conch-shell horns, string instruments, rattles, shakers and scrapers. European introductions include the Spanish guitar and Western concert instruments, reflecting a history of classical composition whose regional influence began in the Spanish colonial period.

Maya adaptation of the marimba, brought to the America by enslaved West Africans, speaks to a broader dynamic of cultural interaction between indigenous and African-descent peoples wherever they encountered one another in Mexico, Central America and the Spanish colonial port cities of mainland South America. Given colonial contact between African-descent and Maya peoples in Central America, their respective expressive cultural traditions clearly acted upon one another in important ways. From the nineteenth century onward, travelers, ethnologists, archaeologists, government officials and missionaries have remarked upon regional indigenous musical and related spiritual traditions. The evidence, though culturally biased and fragmentary, indicates clear cultural continuities, and evident interaction with traditions in neighboring areas. For instance, Jesuit missionary reports on Maya and Garifuna music were typically hostile to the perceived expression of "pagan" beliefs in expressive performance, a culturally loaded way of saying that native peoples combined their own spiritual traditions with those of the conquerors.

African diaspora identity politics finds expression in world music's recent discovery of another indigenous Caribbean Central American music, that of the Garifuna, a culturally hybrid, multilingual people of Afro-Amerindian descent who never submitted to slavery. They populated Central America's Atlantic coast from Belize to Nicaragua after English colonial forces defeated them in 1797, sending them from their native St. Vincent into western Caribbean exile in the Bay Islands of Honduras. Garifuna singing and drumming show keen affinities with other musics of the African diaspora, with a fiercely percussive, communal call-and response formulation rooted in the sacred context of ancestral invocations and spirit possession, showing clear affinities with Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodoun and Brazilian Candomblé.

Garifuna music, dance and ritual are little known outside the culture, but important documentary work has been done, and some critical archival recordings exist. By contrast, many recent releases are more commercially oriented, and consequent world-music press coverage has focused on modified Garifuna styles particularly attractive to international audiences. The transmission of indigenous expressive and spiritual traditions to the next generation has suffered in the process, and a comprehensive exploration of Garifuna music as a dynamic historical and contemporary mode of cultural expression has yet to appear.

Garifuna music builds on an ensemble of three garaon drums: the improvising primera or heart drum, the counter-rhythmic segunda or shadow drum, and the steady bass-line tercera. An unusual adaptation is the snares, gut or steel guitar strings or wires stretched over the drumhead to achieve the buzzing sound favored in many West African music cultures. This lends a highly valued denseness to the sound mix, and can deceive the untutored ear as an artifact of electronic distortion in the recording process. Other instruments include turtle-shell percussion, claves, bottle percussion, and--derived from the Carib-Amerindian traditions of mainland South America--a variety of gourd shakers (sisira) and scrapers. In secular terms, the most salient Garifuna genres are punta and paranda. Spanish for "carousal," paranda adds the guitar to the garaon ensemble. The salacious paranda couple dance recalls the pelvic thrust or vacunao of the Cuban rumba guaguancó; it also recalls the Garifuna Palo de Mayo ("Maypole") of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.

Ethnomusicologists were first to record Garifuna music. Researcher Doris Stone worked in Honduras in the early 1950s, and her field recordings, including those of the Garifuna, appeared soon thereafter on Folkways Records. Founder Moses Asch, a seminal figure of "world music" before the genre had a name, left nearly 2,200 exceptional titles when he died in 1986, whereupon the catalog passed to Smithsonian Folkways.

Anthropologists Carol and Travis Jenkins worked in Belize some three decades after Stone's Honduras field efforts. The secular and sacred Garifuna music Jenkins and Jenkins documented, originally issued by Folkways in 1982, are essential titles for anyone who wants to explore this music in depth. (The Stone and Jenkins field recordings are now available in the Smithsonian Custom Compact Disc Series; see accompanying links.) Together, this work enables a historical comparison that confirms the conservative aesthetic at the core of a dynamic Garifuna tradition. Indeed, Garifuna music's intrinsic human appeal inspired UNESCO in its recent recognition of Garifuna culture by proclaiming it a "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" (see accompanying link).

Following World War II, Garifuna men began to emigrate in search of work, while women, children and the elderly stayed behind. More recently, entire families move in a transnational circuit that links Central America with cosmopolitan Garifuna communities in New York, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Houston and Los Angeles. Musicians have assimilated hip-hop, rap, soul, rhythm and blues, jazz, pop, country western, rock, reggae, Latin, Afro-Caribbean and world musical influences, including guitar and vocal styles reminiscent of West Africa, all turned out in superb musicianship, pointed good humor and profound irony.

Whatever the case, the cultural, socioeconomic and political circumstances under which the Garifuna and Maya live (whether in Central America or the urban United States) have not improved markedly, and music in everyday context reflects that fact. At the same time, international radio broadcasts, satellite TV, VCRs, cassette culture, tourism's impact and the dynamics of international migration work their own cultural alchemy, with often dynamic results in terms of changing tastes and musical practice. These musics are anything but static creations, as manifest in the recordings listed in the following discography.

Maya & Garifuna Recordings

The Black Caribs of Honduras, Smithsonian Folkways Custom Compact Disc Series FE-4435 (Doris Stone's historic 1953 field recording)

Traditional Music of the Garifuna of Belize, Smithsonian Folkways Custom Compact Disc Series F-4031 (1982 field recording by Jenkins & Jenkins)

Dabuyabarugu: Inside the Temple: Sacred Music of the Garifuna of Belize, Smithsonian Folkways Custom Compact Disc Series F-4032 (1982 field recording by Jenkins & Jenkins)

Lugua & the Larubeya Drummers, Bumari, Stonetree STR 13 (traditional Garifuna hand drumming from Belize)

The Original Turtle Shell Band, Serewe, Stonetree STR 07 (traditional Garifuna hand drumming from Belize)

Paranda: Africa in Central America, Stonetree STR CD 018 (a powerful 1998 compilation of the acoustic guitar and percussion-accompanied Garifuna paranda ballad style of Belize, Guatemala and Honduras)

Andy Palacio, Keimoun (Beat On), Stonetree STR 05 (Belize's most popular proponent of Garifuna punta rock)

Chatuye, Heartbeat in the Music, Arhoolie CD 383 (contemporary, traditionally rooted Garifuna music from Los Angeles)

Aziatic, Most Wanted, Stonetree STR/HOP CD 101 and Crazy Fi We, Stonetree STR/HOP CD 103 (Belizean Garifuna hip-hop from Los Angeles)

Florencio Mess, Maya K'ekchi' Strings, Stonetree STR 08 (traditional Maya music from Belize)

Music from Guatemala 1, Caprice CAP 21598 (1999 field recording of Maya and Mestizo music, with ample representation of the marimba)

Music from Guatemala 2: Garifuna Music, Caprice CAP 21631 (1999 field recording of traditional Garifuna groups)

Music from Honduras 1, Caprice CAP 21632 (2000 field recording of indigenous and other folk groups, including marimba music)

Music from Honduras 2: Garifuna Music, Caprice CAP 21638 (2000 field recording of traditional Garifuna groups)

Lita Ariran, Songs of the Garifuna, JVC VICG-5337 or Wea/Sire/Discovery/Antone's (a traditional Garifuna group from Honduras)

Punta Rhythm: Garifuna Celebration, POW-Sony Discos PWK 83538 (popular, Garifuna-inspired, amplified dance music compilation from Honduras)