The band consists of the best musicians in the fertile Garifuna music scene. They bring together the deep cultural roots of Garifuna music, mixed with modern grooves, arrangements, and instruments like the unique hand drums, the “primera” and “segunda”, turtle shells and jawbones, guitars and bass. The musicians create a powerful energy on stage, building hypnotizing rhythms that form the backbone for the haunting melodies and powerful vocals that characterize the project.
The Garifuna are the Afro-Amerindians of Central America, the descendants of a group of West African slaves who were shipwrecked off the coast of St. Vincent in the 1600s. They live in small communities in places like Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, along the Caribbean coast. And their music is an extraordinary blend that layers soulful indigenous and African rhythms with sweet, lyrical melodies.
Singing in Garifuna – an endangered language that blends indigenous Arawak and Carib with French, English and Spanish – they take on a political and social issue that extends far beyond the Garifuna community in “Ubou.”
“The complex rhythms demand attention and quickly resolve themselves into a completely irresistible groove. When the melodies kick in on top of them, the lushness is overwhelming.”— The Wall Street Journal
“Full of surging seaside rhythms and yearning, soulful melodies that hang in the memory,”— BBC Music
Recorded 7/12/23.
For more info on the band, visit
https://www.garifunacollective.com/
Producer: MCTV