Elements of Garifuna music and Resources by Wendy Griffin Related to these Elements
By Wendy Griffin January 2015
1. The Garifuna
religious ceremonies are led by a buyei or shaman who is always in charge of
playing the marracas in ceremonies, although some buyeis also lead the songs of
a ceremony. Wendy Griffin has written a
biography of a Garifuna female shaman, the incomplete rough draft is in the
University of Pittsburgh library under the name Yaya: La Vida de una Curandera
Garifuna. Wendy Griffin also has an English versión of this small book. Wendy
Griffin also has files in English of the parts of the book still not added to
it—other elements of being a Garifuna shaman that are part of the general
description of a shaman in the Wikipedia article on shamanism, but that she had
not included in the original article. She also has the information on the
origen of the songs that Yaya composed, which it turns out it is an interesting
subject where do Garifuna songs come from and how do they become spread in the
communities. She has information on songs and plants that were revealed by the
ancestors to Yaya, how her ancestor who was a buyei taught her to play maracas
for ceremonies in dreams, how buyeis are
called to be buyeis and there are different ages at which people are called and
it makes a difference when in their life cycle they were called. The story of
Wendy Griffin’s evolving research and work with Yaya is on Wendy Griffin’s blog
www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com
Some of Yaya’s comments on the buyei’s tasks druing the
ceremonies or how the buyei knows which ceremony to do are in Los Garifunas de
Honduras. Tete Cobbah and Dr. Pashington Obeng, of Wellsley and Harvard
Universities have also interviewed male and female buyeis in Honduras. The book Esoterica Garifuna by Salvador Suazo
is the result of his interviews with buyeis about the Garifuna religión. Buyeis
figure in various Garifuna videos including El Espiritu de Mi mama, Garifuna in
Peril, Tierra Negra on Youtube. Paul Nabor the 80 year old Belizean Garifuna
parranda Singer is also a buyei. Other Garifuna authors also include
information about buyeis in their books like Tomas Alberto Avila (2009) Black
Carib-Garifuna and Virgilio Lopez’s books. See Ronny Velasquez’s books on
Shamanist songs for a general overview of songs and shaman.
2. Garifuna religious ceremonies have singers. Most of the
singers belong to Garifuna women’s dance clubs. Wendy Griffin has unpublished
research but it is written up on Garifuna women’s dance clubs and their roles
in Garifuna community including its internal governance and dispute resolution
and punishing people who break norms, providing rewards to people who follow
the norms, maintaining unity of the different Garifuna villages, providing
mutual help in labor, and in sharing funeral expenses, etc. Many of these roles
seem similar to those of women’s dance clubs in Ghana. Also information on the clothes worn for
different dances and when new clothes must be obtained and when dances are done
by these groups. Wendy Griffin has written up but not published the biography
of one Singer, who is a buyei’s assistant, has been dance club president, her
mother was dance club president, she is an artisan, her dance club’s music Club
Wabaragoun was recorded by Radio France, she was part of the group that wrote
Los Garifunas de Honduras, and did the two videos with Witness.org When the
River Joined the Sea and Garifuna Holding Ground (Lucha Garifuna). Her male and
female Garifuna dolls in traditional clothes are in the Burke Museum,
University of Washington, and the Ethnic Toy Museum, Neuquen, Argentina. She is
a niece of Yaya. She and Yaya were part of Wendy Griffin’s talk on Six
Afro-Honduran Authors at SALALM in 2014.
3. Garifuna music has musicians. In many cases the musicians
are also the instrument makers like the makers of claves, and drums, or the
makers of maracas. Wendy Griffin has both published and unpublished research on
the making of Garifuna instruments, which can include prayers, and special
plants to provide protection from evil spirits, and ceremonies done at
midnight. Also information on the environmental problems affecting the
continued making of Garifuna musical instruments. In her book Los Garifunas de
Honduras social problems in getting Young people to learn to make the crafts
are also noted. Photos of Garifuna crafts including those used for music are on
the Internet, in the liner notes of the CD Ayó by the Garifuna Collective and
there are some examples of Garifuna musical instruments in the US in Burke
Museum, University of Washington, the Garifuna Museum of Los Angeles, and a
Garifuna drum in the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian. Also the live
Garifuna music groups in Seattle, in New York, in Miami, in Los Angeles have
the musical instruments that they need to dance to live music.
4. Garifuna music requires the use of the Garifuna language.
Wendy Griffin has information on the materials available on the Garifuna
language and its historical ties as well as its gramar and vocabulary, the
state of the Garifuna language, programs to try to rescue the Garifuna
language. Some examples of what the
words mean are in Los Garifunas de Honduras, and also in the guides to Garifuna
language materials and guide to Ethnomusicological resources, there are
examples of other resources that tell what different types of Garifuna songs
mean. The types of songs sung can be compared to the types of songs sung in
Southern African healing ceremonies among Bantu language speakers which are
described on Wikipedia and have also been compared to ceremonies done by Yoruba
and Igbo speakers by Dorothy Franzone in her doctoral thesis. Wendy Griffin has written some reflections on
the effect on Garifuna society and Young people that the Garifuna young people
no longer hear the normative guidelines provided by Garifuna songs and stories
because they do not speak Garifuna.
5. Garifuna music takes place in specific spaces, sometimes
made of special materials. Also for ceremonies these spaces are elaborately
purified, for a dugu just the preparations usually take a year, and so a mali
is held when the post to build the dugu house is planted to promise the
ancestors that the dugu will take place and to begin the purification process. Issues of loss of specific types of Garifuna lands and resources as it impacts
Garifuna ceremonies and some non-religious dances is a signficant part of Los
Garifunas de Honduras.
6. There is a history of new dances having been added to the
Garifuna repetoire, especially during the Truxillo Railroad period, and also
the African connections of Garifuna dances and songs and songs, including the
choruses that are found in many traditional stories, called uruga. Wendy
Griffin’s study of the effect of the Truxillo Railroad period on Garifuna games
and dances is on her blogs www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com
and www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com
7. Garifuna music during ceremonies is often sung to
accompany presentations of traditional Garifuna food and drink to the
ancestors. The names of these foods and drinks, and issues related to these
foods and drinks and their histories, including the African origins of
Afro-Honduran foods is part of Wendy Griffin’s research that she has typed up,
but only part of it is published.
8. The place of
Garifuna music in Garifuna ceremonies and descriptions of the dances and
ceremonies are in books and thesises noted in the Guide to Resources for
Ethnomusicologists.
8. Wendy Griffin and David Flores have a signficant amount
of information on the issue of the clothes worn for doing different Garifuna
dances. David Flores’s History of
Honduran Folkdance clothes is due to be published now in 2015. The Honduran
Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Sports published a color guide to Garifuna dance
clothes, based on the outifits of the National Garifuna Folklore Ballet,
however, these outfits in many cases do not resemble what is used in the
Garifuna communities. The dance clothes shown in videos from Garitv.com like
Historia de Corozal and Historia de Sambo Creek are much more realistic and
typical of what is actually worn in the communities. The dance outfits in El
Espiritu de Mi Mama and Garifuna in Peril are also very realistic. Los
Garifunas de Honduras has photos of almost every dance and ceremony and its
clothes with descriptions.
9. There is a lot of commercially available Garifuna music
in a lot of genres and resources for them are in the guides to Ethnomusical
resources about Garifuna music, to Vendors of Afro-Honduran (Garifuna, Miskito,
Black Bay Islander) Audio Visual Materials, and where they are found on the
Internet is included in various guides including the article Garifuna
Immigrants Invisible available on the Garifuna in Peril movie website, the
SALALM 2013 conference paper on The Overlap of the Indigenous and Black Human
Rights Movements: The Afro-Indigenous Garifuna and their Use of Electronic
Resources, and a Guide to Materials (Videos, CD’s, Books, Websites) about
Afro-Hondurans prepared for SALALM. The
roles of some Garifuna singers like Andy Palacios and his promoter Aziatic who
is a musician and made his own film in his own right too, or Garifuna musician
James Lovell in New York who has also made a film have been important
internationally in the recognition of local languages dying which will in turn
impact the music written in those languages.
10. Part of the overall
problem of the survival of the Garifuna ceremonies and music are issues of
social pressure, especially by churches of various denominations, for the
Garifunas not to realize these ceremonies and not to speak the Garifuna
language. Wendy Griffin has also collected
information on ways these pressures were applied and what were some of the
effects on carrying out the ceremonies. This social pressure is also part of a
general pattern of discrimination against the Garifunas, and social pressures,
including explicit school policies towards forcing the assimilation or “españolización”
of the Garifunas.
The list of Wendy Griffin’s Works available in US libraries
and Museums are in documents on her English blog as is the Guide to Videos,
Cd’s, Books on Afro-Hondurans, Vendors of Afro-Honduran Audio-Visual Materials,
and the Guide for Ethnomusicologists to Resources on Garifuna music, dance and
ceremonies. These are parts of a Project with SALALM.org librarians to identify
better materials available on Afro-Hondurans
and eventually also on Honduran Indians.
Soon the Guide on Garifuna language materials available will
also be up on this blog.
Short biographies of the principal Afro-Honduran authors,
and the principal researchers in Honduras who research them, collected so that
one can separate out the most authentic materials as being by Garifuna authors
themselves, are on Wendy Griffin’s
Spanish language blog.
For other Works or information noted above as unpublished,
please contact the author directly.
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