Sources of Garifuna and Miskito CD's

Special Sources of Garifuna  and Miskito CD’s
 

Part 2-Originally Prepared for SALALM's Audio Visual Committee

Folkway Records Smithsonian Institute. They have an Internet site to order from.

They have for sale a number of Garifuna CD’s, including one from 1954 with liner notes by doris Zemurray stone, daughter of then president of United fruit Samuel Zemurray, and is one of the first Honduran records of any type, and the earliest Garifuna recoring. Another is an 1980’s recording of Garifuna ceremonial or religious music which it is very unusual they let you record this type of music as modern things are thought to bring witchcraft and you have to ask the ancestor’s permission to play the music at all. To see some of the movements with the dances and other activities related to the dugu ceremony, see the movie el Espiritu de Mi mama for sale on the Garifuna in peril website. It is in Spanish with English subtitles. Descriptions of Garifuna religion and dances are in Salvador Suazo’s book Esoterica, in David Flores’s Evolucion Historica de la Danza Folklorica Hondureña (Wendy Griffin did the Garifuna and other Afro-honduran sections), Tomas Alberto Avila’s book Black Carib-garifuna, in some of Garifuna author Virgilio Lopez’s work,  Wendy Griffin’s Los Garifunas de Honduras, and her work Yaya: La vida de una curadera Garifuna, and a book Diaspora conversions about the Garifunas of new York, but he calls them Black Caribs. Relationships between Garifuna dances and ceremonies and West African religions are in a doctoral thesis by Dorothy Frazone available from PROQUEST.com. Wendy Griffin has as unyet published data on Garifuna ceremonies as related to Bantu ceremonies of healing, such as in South Africa.

The folkways collection also includes Garifuna songs in a Cd with work songs, which are a very endangered form of song among the Garifunas. They also have a CD of Miskito music, and a CD of Honduran ladino’s music.

Radio France

They did a CD of Garifuna music as it is sung by large women’s dance groups, such as the 60 members of Club Wabaragoun (let us all go forward together) of Trujillo.  In French it was known as les chansons des caraibs noires, the songs of the black caribs.  In Honduras it was sold in a pirated version as Club wabaragoun cultura Garifuna 100%. Balbina Chimilio who Wendy Griffin spoke about at SALALM 2014 is a singer in this group. The CD includes a combination of religious and secular, but always traditional, music. Radio France has a website, but I do not see this CD on the website. It is in the Schomburg Center for Black Culture's collection under Ensemble Warabaragun.

 

Radio Progreso and Honduras laboral

They have a number of videos including about the massacre of Miskitos at Ahuas, and the Honduran Commission of Disappeared people accusing the DEA or gringos of having done it. There are also photos of the Honduran Miskito, Garifuna, Tawahkas and Pech meeting to say that they were against the searching for hydrocarbons, and the roads, and the mines, and the hydroelectric plants and the African palms. The US government on its Southcom website says it is helping Honduras being less dependent on foreign fuel (but this really means they are supporting African palms for biodiesel for export, gas and petroleum for export, and hydroelectric dams, some of which like on the Guadelupe River west of Trujillo are designed specifically for resorts and not the local people). This is on top of the protests of the lencas in the area of Rio Blanco. The Lencas are threatened with 15 mines in their area, and a ZEDE in the area of Gracias where the Honduran president is from, besides the dam. The people who lost their land for the El Cajon dam were mostly not compensated according to studies by Dr. William Loker, now a Dean at Chico State university.  There is also a video on what is really happening with Honduran chidren and young people, and the issue of people being sent to jail for crimes they personally did not commit. 

Al Jazeera

Has an interview with a person from the US House of Representatives saying the US is not being helpful to answer questions about the Ahuas massacre and the US role in it, so it is not just Hondurans asking questions what is the role of the US military in this.

See also the HondurasWeekly.com articles and the San Jose Mercury articles about the role of the US military in bringing cocaine to the US during the Contra era, and the Trujillo airport was known as the Oliver North airport. Notice how many people associated with ZEDE, with ALEC, with Bay Islands Real estate are related directly to Ronald Reagan like his son or his speech writer or George Bush’s family or to the business associate of the first ¨President George Walker Bush, George Walker.  Walkers carrying American or British passports have been active in the Mosquitia of Honduras and Nicaragua since the middle of the 19^th century.

Antonieta Máximo

Wendy Griffin also talked somewhat about Antonieta Maximo and her family’s story during her presentation about Afro-Honduran authors at SALALM 2014.

Cd’s of Antonieta Maximo

Nostalgia dedicado a los imigrantes.  Antonieta Maximo composes music, but her songs on this CD were sung by a man and in Spanish, as she grew up not speaking Garifuna. Antonieta Maximo was one of the Afro-honduran authors in Wendy Griffin’s 2014 SALALM talk and she has recently published a book of poetry Duda, by Editorial Pacura, San Pedro Sula, honduras.

Maximo, Antonieta (2012) Duda, San Pedro Sula: Editorial Pacura  (a book of poems in Spanish)

CD: Nostalgia: Dedicado a los Emigrantes

Pieza de Teatro hecho Video sobre “Human Trafficking” Los hijos de Paca y Elena

El CD  que tengo es dedicado a los inmigrantes, por eso le puse Nostalgia, yo tengo un CD aqui, pero si puedes sacarle copia al que tienes esta bien en Honduras tengo el master., salgo hacia Honduras el sabado 15 de marzo. Puedo dejar con mi hijo los libros que tengo aca y la gente puede ordenarlos dirigiendose a el la direccion es

To order copies of her book or her Cd in the US please contact her son in New York City.
A Gonzalo Blanco.Maximo
 484 West 43rd Street Apt.21R
 New York, NY 10036

Su celular es 646 228-0642

Estoy muy interesada en hacer presentaciones del libro de poesía Duda en las bibliotecas de USA para los de habla bilingue. si sabes de algun interesado me avisas o le das mis datos. En el libro mio estan mis datos  como parte de mi hoja de vida. It is also posible to order CD’s with him.

Antonieta’s sister is the owner and editor of a newspaper www.elaguilanews.com

StonetreeRecords, the leading record company of Garifuna music,located in Belize. They have a website. Also their music is widely distributed on the Internet sales sites including Amazon.com. Their artists are frequently interviewed on the radio and these interviews and some of their songs are also on the Internet with the Interviews. It is common that there are youtube videos about their artists. Andy Palacio who recorded with them won together with his record producer Ivan Duval the Womex or World Music Expo prize in 2007 for his albulm Watiña and he also won the BBC3 World Music Award in the Category of the Americas posthumously and was the last winner of this award as it was then cancelled. There are talks by him on Youtube. Watiña is described on amazon.com as the most critically acclaimed recording of 2007 in any genre. 

Costa Norte Records. Honduras’s only professional recording company.  Many Honduran musical groups have Garifuna percussion as back up to other kinds of music by Ladino musicians. For example Guillermo Anderson, Honduras’s cultural ambassador and who has several Cd’s and often plays in Europe, usually plays with a Garifuna backup group and Aurelio Martinez got started in professional music as his backup musician and then doing a recording Lita Ariran with the rest of Guillermo Anderson’s percussion section. Guillermo Anderson has also tried to do music incorporating Miskito music into his music, and also doing music with different autoctonous musical instruments. Angela Bendeck a Honduran who recently played at viña del Mar plays with a Garifunaback up section. Rascaniguas (Niguas are worms in the beach sand that get under your toe nails, so if you scratch .rascar, your niguas you will have to dance). which has played at the Vancouver folk festival as well as around Central America usually has a Garifuna percussion section. Guillermo Anderson has a website as does Costa norte records. Wendy Griffin has done a Honduras this Week article on Guillermo Anderson and also on Costa Norte rock band Khaotikos. Guillermo Anderson has a blog which has videos including a new music video Alo Mama about the phone call of a Honduran Immigrant to his mother that is beautiful, that here is nothing like they told me, and my feet ready to run and my hands working. He also has a website.

Finding Sabas Whittaker Materials on the Internet. Wendy Griffin spoke about the author and musician composer and painter and poet at SALALM 2014. Her article about him for Honduras this Week at the time of the publication of Africans in the Americas is still on the angelfire site.

Authors of Mixed Garifuna and Black English Speaker Background

Sabas Whittaker

Most of his published Works are on Amazon.com

Whittaker, Sabas Tears of Joy, Peace and Harmony

Whittaker, Sabas, While the Fires Burn Within,

Whittaker, Sabas, Vestiges of a Journey

Whittaker, Sabas, A Song for Valentines, a Song for love poetry to Our hearts.

Whittaker, Sabas (2003) Africans in the Americas Our Journey throughout the world: The Long African Journey Throughout the World Our History a Short Stop in the Arena. iUniverse. (this is for sale on Barnes and noble.com)

Whittaker, Sabas  (2003)    Away From the Field:  Now and then…A History Behind the history in the Treatment of mental health

Whittaker, Sabas ( ) Faith in the Field: A Historical Religious perspective on the Study of Mental Health.

Plays

He has written several plays most of which have been produced as fund raising benefits such as for the homeless or people living with AIDS in Conneticut, for example:

Don’t Look down on your brother if you are not going to help him up.

He also combines painting exhibitions of his paintings,he now has over 80, together with poetry readings as a fundraiser. He also designs wooden furniture.

Cd’s

Second Recording was Eternal Optimist,

Soul Survival, on Sabby Records

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/SabasWhittaker

Sabas Whittaker, Flight Of The Phoenix (Dedicated to Middletown,CT)

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7292822&style=music&setpref=none

(both of these have photos)

 The issue of whether the artist is actually being paid for his work seems to be affecting Sabas Whittaker’s work who says it has been years since I received anything fromthese people and also the videos of the Comite de emergencia Garifuna with witness.org who say on their website that they share the proceeds with the organizations but after I bought the videos, there is no indication that the Garifunas received anything.

 

Some Interesting Internet videos of Garifunas or other Afro-Hondurans.

Garifunas are hard to classify, as noted in the New York Times video Being Garifuna ( www.nytimes.com/video/2012/01/13/us/.../being-garifuna.html).  

Aurelio Martinez and Paul nabor in Aventura Garifuna (http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/video/todo-el-mundo-es-musica/todo-el-mundo-es-musica-honduras-y-belize-la-aventura-garifuna/1070122).   ). BeingGArifuna.com did a review of the video.http://www.beinggarifuna.com/blog/2012/01/19/garifuna-singer-musician-aurelio-martinez-is-subject-of-la-aventura-garifuna-documentary-on-paranda-music).  This video has also been put on Youtube in parts, and HondurasWeekly.com has featured Part 3 where he sings Africa on its website. Aurelio Martinez forms part of several HondurasWeekly.com articles and is also mentioned in the Garifuna Immigrants invisible article on the Garifuna in peril website www.garifunainperil.com Go to About and Garifunas.

Aurelio Martinez also won a rolex scholarship to go to Africa to study with a Sengalese musician and there is a whole website with several videos about this including his audition verion of Africa the song he wrote, and also at the end he performs this with the Senagelese African band Etoile Noire (Black star) in London. Many of Aurelio Martinez’s Cd’s are available for sale from Stonetree Records which is the Belizean record company. He began his career playing on the Cd which also featured Paul Nabor and Andy Palacio, Parranda. Andy Palacio was famous not only for his music, but for his desire to keep the Garifuna music and language and culture alive. Paul Nabor as a buyei or shaman also shared that as did Aurelio Martinez. The Garifunas have struggled to get the Garifuna language and culture recognized as a UNESCO World Masterpeices and Intangible heritage. Like many things, no money to actually save this languagewas related with that recognition. Aurelio Martinez recently played Carneigie hall noted on BeingGarifuna.com. There is also a good video of Aurelio Martinez singing Africa in Europe with the Etoile Noir (Black Star) band of Sengal on the Rolex site about giving him a scholarship to study music in Africa with a famous World Music musician for who led Etoile Noire.

GarifunaCoalition.com  this new York Garifuna NGO’s website has a music section which includes the Honduran national anthem in Garifuna, the national anthem of the Garifunas Yarumein (St. Vincent in Garifuna) by singer Aurelio Martinez, Garifuna women dancing from the Let’s go Honduras website, which proves Keri Brondo’s point that they use the Garifunas dancing to attract tourists, but then displace them to give their land to the tourists or tourist businesses.

The World Conference on Indigenous peoples of the UN will be in New York in September 2014. There are videos on their website in English and in Spanish about what Latin American Indians and US and Canadian Indians want to discuss. These are very thoughtful videos and declarations which do address many of the issues facing Honduran Indians today, including Aguacide, the poisoning of the water so that the fish die and the people are poisoned. A woman Wilma Calderon who another website describes as a Miskito reporter as part of MASTA was a Latin American representative to the preliminary conference in Alta, Norway and she will also speak in Spain at a conference about Indians. However, the photo of the participants of the Guatemalan preconference showed no Miskitos or Garifuna participants. The talk by Kenneth Deer of the Canadian Indians was very good. The preparations for this conference are already breaking down and the US and Canadian Indians have already withdrew from the conference, but Iroquois Indians did help open the Conference. Alrhough they passed a resolution it is not on the website in any language and only one of the sessions about the problems has a summary published on the website in Spanish.

The Demarest Factor is a video on the Bowman Expeditions spefically Mexico Indigena which is a DOD funded project to study the geography of the ethnic communities. These bowman Expeditions are now being done in Honduras and the rest of Central America by Dr.Peter herily from the University of Kansas. See enemigocomun.com for information on how to see the 56 minute film which had been available for free on the Internet, but was taken down by the decision of the hosting service.

Youtube has a lot of Garifuna videos. “Discovering the Rio Platano biosphere in Search of Ciudad Blanca”with Garifuna Roberto Marin from Plaplaya and Wendy Griffin, there are lots of good comments about archaeology, looting, forest destruction, lack of protection of protected areas, Mesoamerican, probably Nahua, archaeology in the area, and ends with Garifuna music by Garifuna BOYZ. This is on Youtube in 4 parts in English and one part in Spanish. Wendy Griffin is in the process of making a bonus DVD with extra footage of NE Honduran archaeology in private collections. Available in English or in Spanish. Some groups with Youtube videos include Andy Palacios, including interviews, Paul Nabor, Los menudos Trujillo, Honduras, Balet nacional folklorico Garifuna perfmring at UCLA library, Aurelio Martinez. His Aventura Garifuna a video of His life and where he sings Africa with Garifuna musicians and Garifunas listening is beautiful. See BeingGarifuna.com for a study of Garifuna music and musicans and some garifuna musicians who have over 20,000 hits on Youtube for their music videos. Being Garifuna also mentions the Bronx music store that sells a lot of Garifuna music and videos, both those produced in Honduras and those produced in New York City. One of the most recognized Garifuna singers in New York is Paula Castillo who has recorded 8 Cd’s all in Garifuna. She is originally from Guatemala and is mixed Jamaican English speaker and Garifuna from the days of the banana ports. She has been recognized by New York, Lousiana, Guatemala and the Garifuna Coalition of New York.  Her music is very popular in Honduras and according to BeingGarifuna.com survey among the top 5 songs played all over the US in Garifuna parties. There is a video of the Garifuna celebration for Garifuna day in Limon in 2013. Also there are videos of Garifuna Boyz and the celebration in Livingston, Guatemala.

Also important on youtube is Causa Justa’s a Telesur show’s 2014 segment on Tierra Negra, which was about the current land problems of the Garifunas of Honduras, including a lawyer explaining about the legal issues. This includes part of chugu ceremonies by Garifuna buyeis and musicians and dancers in the community of Limon. Causa Justa also did a segment on the Lencas of Rio blanco, which is shown on their facebook page, but is not on youtube.

Another important youtube video is Fraude electoral about the troubled Honduran November 2013 election. The maker of this video looked at the official TSE (Tribunal Supremo Electoral) results up on the Internet and shown Election table by Election table the “actas” or reports that in pen had one total for the presidential candidates and what was in the computer for the same election table  which often showed differences of 60 votes or 100 votes and the differences were always more for the nationalist candidate who won Juan Orlando Hernandez and the losses were always of the presidential candidates for Libre (Xiomara Castro, Manuel Zelaya’s wife) and for PAC (Partido Anti-corrupcion) whose candidate was Salvador Nasralla, who although he is famous as a sports announcer and TV game show host, has a B.A. in Television Broadcasting from a Chilean university.  Examples of written reports complaining of Fraud are included on the Food First website, and also there are amazing reports inHondurasWeekly.com and the blogicitodelagringa, the latter also went ballot box by ballot box analysis of some of the most controversial elections like that of El Paraiso, Copan and the Francisco Morazon Congressional race against Osvaldo Ramos Soto, and the analysis again shows amazing fraud.  That the US and the EU said all was well, and that according to Honduran Spanish language papers the international community made Manuel Zelaya to sign something accepting the election results before the election, something they have not done since the 1924 civil war, plus the presence of US military and $10 million dollars from the US  to help the election process including “security”  are some of the reasons why in Tegucigalpa they say the US sold the Honduran 2013 election to Juan Orlando Hernandez’s Nationalist Party. Although HondurasWeekly.com articles liken in several instances the past election to the tactics of deceased Honduras president Tiburcio Carias, thought by many to have been a dictator, it was not until the inauguration and an interview with her by El Heraldo in their awesome  Tomade Posesion 2014 Multimedia presentation that Wendy Griffin found out that Juan Orlando Hernadez’s wife is in fact the grandniece of Tiburcio Carias, the granddaughter of his brother and her second last name is Carias. Family stories and histories and connections and identity conflicts between that where one was born and that which one marries into, some of the topics of the 2014 SALALM conference, do matter.

12. The Mormon Church’s video A Story of About the Garifunas on youtube,

The issue of Immigration of the Garifunas is also highlighted. Dozens of the Garifunas affected by plans to put in a charter city or model city in the Trujillo-Santa Fe area are actually Garifuna US citizens who after working 35-40 years in the US legally, usually beginning as sailors,  and then they retired to Honduras again to live on their pensions and social Security. This video also talks about the issue of Hondurans being deported.  A book related to Garifuna immigration see the Spanish version of Nancie Gonzalez’s book Pelegrinos del mar, which was published by editorial Guaymuras in Honduras. This version is significantly changed from her 1988 English version which did not deal much with immigration.

  Vimeo.com  has over 159 Garifuna videos.

 Flickr also has some Garifuna videos especially that of Katherine hall Trujillo’s TED talk, as well as 8.000 photos of Garifunas. 

Also important on Vimeo.com is the 2011 Paradaise in Peril video about the destruction of the Rio Platano biosphere where there are Garifunas, Miskito Indians and the Pech Indians, also a video on the issue of what are supposedly green fuels but actually are excused to steal land and use pesticides which hurt workers, including 8,000 with renal insufficiency in Nicaragua, and also Guatemalan Indians and the people in the Lower Aguan (Bajo Aguan).

There are also videos about the land problems of the Garifunas  and militarization of the Mosquitia on RealNews.com.  The RealNews.com video about Trujillo has the video of Randy Jurgensen, which if searching for his name on google in English and in Spanish comes up with lots of interesting stories about him and why he is called the king of porn, about who is supporting his investments in the Trujillo area from outside of Honduras including Barrick Gold and Dominion Bank of Canada, and Canadian Imperialism as related to the 2009 coup. Who is supporting his investments in the Trujillo, Santa Fe, Guadelupe area inside Honduras are also interesting stories. Who is supporting the ZEDE or Model Cities and the development of the Bay Islands and behind Miguel Facusse and FICOHSA and Jaime Rosenthal outside and inside Honduras are also interesting stories worth considering.