The Garifuna Women's Project

Umalali (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 18, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Cumbancha
• ASIN: B0012OVFO8
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,128 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some beautifully arresting music. It gets under your skin., June 1, 2008

By 

India - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Garifuna Women's Project (Audio CD)

Andy Palacio's Wátina was one of last year's most highly rated world albums, a showcase for the music and culture of his Garifuna people, descendants of shipwrecked slaves who retain powerful African influences in their villages on Belize's Caribbean coast.
While Palacio died suddenly in January, his legacy is continued here by his producer, Ivan Duran, who brings together a number of singular female voices to explore the women's side of the Garifuna story.
The Garifuna communities of Central America's Atlantic coast are beginning to seem like the new Cape Verde -- there is so much good music coming out of there. The truth is that it has as much to do with the love of Belizean producer Ivan Duran for the music and the people as any one musician breaking it big.
"Umalali" is one of those records that keeps getting under your skin. Plaintive harmonised voices call and respond over the traditional beat of the music and are subtly and successfully added to by sensitive production and additional instrumentation to produce an album that is every bit as good as the late, great Andy Palacio's and a good deal more consistent throughout.
The album was built up over many years. Research giving way to field recordings, followed by studio recording, giving way to additional instruments and finally the whole thing was painstakingly produced. It is, like the Garifuna themselves, a fusion but where it succeeds over the vast majority of field recordings meet studio time projects is in the seamlessness of the end result. It feels every bit the kind of music you might hear sung on a Caribbean evening by a couple of guys with guitars coming back to the village and jamming with the women folk.
In music as in much of life, intention is every bit as important as execution. No sane person would go about making a recording in this way if their intention was just to spice up some traditional sounds for a global market.
The gnarled and penetrating voice that opens this enchanting disc belongs to 54-year-old Sofia Blanco, and her gently scolding song was composed by her husband Gregorio. They've been singing together for nearly four decades in this lovely Guatemalan/Honduran/Belizean answer to the blues.
Their drumming is Nigerian, their main language is Spanish, and their "paranda" musical tradition is Carib: a fascinating mix, leading to some wonderfully arresting music.
Duran's guitar-based arrangements deftly draw out the music's diverse resonances, nudging towards proto-funk, Afro-pop and blues without disrupting the informal barefoot-on-the-beach feel: the voices combining throaty warmth and vigour with a spooky African yearning.
Yet while there's the intimation of a strong, self-contained women's musical culture, Duran's male hand on the tiller prevents it from emerging as powerfully as it might.
Still, this as an affecting album, full of unusual and beautifully realised moods and textures.
The songs deal with all aspects of Garifuna life in Belize, including hurricanes and murders as well as work and childbirth.
Propelled onwards by guitar and drums, their effect is gracefully seductive.
Also welcome on this album is the variety of pace from the fast and frantic "Áfayahádina (I Have Traveled)" to the anthemic and intoxicating opener "Nibari (My Grandchild)" and back again to the catchy, sax-laden "Mérua".

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great album from the Garifuna enclave, April 10, 2008

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Garifuna Women's Project (Audio CD)

The Garifuna people live in enclaves along the Caribbean coast of Belize and other Central American countries; they have strong, vibrantly alive African roots and, up until modern times, their own distinctive language and dialects. A few decades ago, the Garifuna culture was in danger of dying out, but in the 1980s a group of younger artists seized it back from the precipice, embraced it, and brought it into the 20th Century. One of their most prominent artists, Andy Palacio, delved into the wellspring of Garifuna traditional music, both preserving the fading oral tradition and combining it with rock, jazz, and other outside influences. He led several bands, and more recently released solo albums including his last one, "Watina" (also on the Cumbancha label) which brought widespread acclaim, just before his untimely passing away early in 2008.

Despite the loss of its great champion, Garifuna culture appears to be healthy and thriving, at least if this fine compilation album is any indication. This is a set of music featuring several women from Palacio's own region of Belize, with keening vocals set against sleek, velvety modern arrangements. Sofia Blanco, Desere Diego, Bernadine Flores, Damiana Gutierez, Sarita Martinez: none of these are famous musicians -- indeed, their singing style is marked by its roughness and authentic rural character, a distinctly African vocal style that's rather similar to the "roda de samba" samba circles sung by older women in Bahia, Brazil. The pairing of the contemporary pop production and their other-worldly chanting seems potentially perilous, but much to the producers' credit, they don't subsume the women's vocals, don't remix or gussy them up, but rather play off of them, and support them delicately and with admirable restraint. Although the rugged core of their pre-modern culture is left intact, the album is surprisingly rich and engaging... Another nice one from this up-and-coming new label! Recommended. (DJ Joe Sixpack, Slipcue music reviews)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding in every way, May 28, 2008

By 

Dr. Debra Jan Bibel "World Music Explorer" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Garifuna Women's Project (Audio CD)

Besides introducting us to the little known music of the Black-Caribbean Indian Garifuna peoples living along the coast of Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, this CD is enhanced with interactive videos of the folk artists in their homes and villages, of celebrations, and of demonstrations of different drum rhythms. [A computer is required for running the videos.] The music itself is strongly West African with more than a Latin tinge and it is sung in Garifuna, although Spanish is the primary language. The sound is unique and full of emotion and rhythm. I certainly wanted to hear more and learn more after purchasing this collection, a joyful education.