Umalali
Among other Central
American music label owners, Ivan Duran is regarded as an infamous
perfectionist. He is also recognized by these same people as passionate,
self-motivated and visionary. In 1997, when Duran launched Stonetree Records in
Belize,
he immediately set about the task of recording and chronicling the music of the
vanishing, indigenous Garifuna culture. Five years later, he had completed the
rough field tapes – over one hundred songs by more than fifty artists from Honduras, Nicaragua,
Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador. It was then time for
Ivan to embark upon the second phase of his project: mixing, mastering and
generally polishing up the final project. And here is where his meticulous
nature again came into play.
Almost all the
songs of the Garifuna culture are composed by women. Their songs generally
chronicle events in their community and private lives, be it a devastating
hurricane, a difficult childbirth or the return of a wayward daughter. Ivan
Duran’s ten year goal has been to preserve and present this unique expression
of art which has culminated in Stonetree’s nineteenth offering, “Umalali: The
Garifuna Women’s Project”. Generally, Garifuna songs are sung by women as they
go about their daily business and are performed in public by the men of the
community. Part of Duran’s vision was to have the composers sing their own
songs, hence the name: Umalali, which means “voices”. And it is the women’s
voices and their compositions that take center stage in this production. The second
half of Duran’s project was to supply the accompaniment to the women’s songs.
He did so using a combination of traditional and “modern” instruments, applying
layer upon layer, a texture to the songs, and then mixing and mastering the
music so that it all had a cohesive final result. Make no mistake, this was a
true labor of love. In the included booklet there are many nice photos of the
women who participated on this CD. There is another that I found revealing:
Ivan Duran sitting, crouched in a chair, his chin cupped in his hand. He and
two of the women from the project are listening to the guitarist Chichiman
rehearsing a track. Ivan looks a little tired, yet absorbed and happy, a man
near the end of a ten year journey. It is as if he planted a seed, watered it
and watched it sprout and grow. And now, more than a decade later, it is about
to bloom.
Duran’s first
Garifuna release was “Watina”, the highly acclaimed, award winning CD by Andy
Palacio, who was known as “the voice of Garifuna”. Palacio shared Ivan’s desire
to preserve the culture and supplied the English translations of the lyrics
provided in the CD package. Sadly, Andy Palacio passed away just six months ago
at the age of forty-nine. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to see the completion of
this historic album.
An introduction is
provided by Jacob Edgar, the president of Cumbancha Records, who picked up the
CD for distribution. But Edgar’s participation goes beyond that, as he is a
long-time friend of Duran, who has followed the travails of his almost
overly-meticulous friend who is now ready to share “The Garifuna Women’s
Project”. In Guanacaste, Stonetree CDs are available exclusively at Jaime
Peligro in Tamarindo, where they will gladly sample the music for their
customers. All comments concerning this article are welcome.
