Music of Belize

Belize is a small country in Central America, and its culture is a mix of Mestizo, Maya, Spanish, British and African influences. After many centuries of Mayan domination, Spanish and then British colonizers arrived in the area, the latter keeping Belize as its only colony in Spanish-dominated Central America. Far more influentially than either European power's arrival, however, was the importation of African slaves. Europeans brought polkas, waltzes, schottisches and quadrilles, while Africans brought numerous instruments and percussion-based musics, including marimba. African culture resulted in the creation of brukdown music in interior logging camps, played using banjo, guitar, drums, dingaling bell, accordion and an ass' jawbone played by running a stick up and down the teeth. Brukdown remains a rural, rarely recorded genre.

Mestizo culture in north and west Belize, and also Guatemala, is dominated by marimba, a xylophone-like instrument descended from an African instrument. Marimba bands use trap drums, double bass and sometimes other instruments. Famous performers include Alma Belicena and the Los Angeles Marimba Band.

Orange Walk and Corozal include numerous mariachi players from Mexico,

Table of contents

1 Garifuna 2 External link 3 References

Garifuna

The Garifunas are descended from slaves enslaved from Nigeria and who later escaped from St. Vincent. Eventually migrating to Belize in 1802, the Garifunas kept themselves apart from the social system then dominant, leading to a distinctive culture that developed throughout the 20th century.

Garifuna music is similarly different from the rest of Central America; the most famous form is punta. An evolved form of traditional music, still usually played using traditional instruments, punta has seen some modernization and electrification in the 1970s; this is called punta rock. Traditional punta dancing is consciously sexy and competitive. Artists like Pen Cayetano helped innovate modern punta rock by adding guitars to the traditional music, and paved the way for later artists like Andy Palacio, Children of the Most High and Black Coral. Punta was the most popular form of Belizean music by the mid-1980s, culminating in the release of Punta Rockers in 1987, a compilation featuring many of the genre's biggest stars.

Other forms of Garifuna music and dance include chumba and hunguhungu, a circular dance in a three beat rhythm, which is often combined with punta. There are other songs typical to each gender, women having eremwu eu and abaimajani, rhythmic a cappella songs, and laremuna wadauman, men's work songs. Other forms of dance music include matamuerte, gunchei, charikawi and sambai.

Paranda music developed soon after the Garifunas arrival in Belize. The music is instrumental and percussion-based. The music was barely recorded until the 1990s, when Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records began the Paranda Project.

External link

• Garifuna mp3 bands

References

• Graham, Ronnie. "Drum'n'Flute Legacies". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, pp 325-331. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0