Ivan Duran of Stonetree Records in Belize is the producer behind the international rise of Central American Garifuna music.  He began in the late 90s, producing a survey of Garifuna talent called Paranda.  A series of others followed, but the real breakthrough came in 2007 with the release of Watina, by Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, a multi-generational consort of Garifuna musicians from Belize and Honduras.  Palacio and the band spent much of 2007 touring the world, and as 2008 began, they were preparing to embark on a new tour, including a number of US dates.  The tour would showcase Palacio, but also stars from Duran’s latest recording project, Umalali: The Garifuna Women’s Project.  Then catastrophe struck on January 18, when Andy Palacio died suddenly from a massive stroke.  The tragedy devastated a worldwide Garifuna following, but it did not derail the tour.  Instead, it transformed it.  In late March, Afropop’s Banning Eyre spoke to Ivan Duran about the tour and the loss of Andy Palacio.  Here’s a link to April 2008 Garifuna Collective tour dates.  And here’s our interview with Ivan Duran.

Banning Eyre: I can hardly imagine what she must have been going through.  I still can’t believe it happened.

Ivan Duran:  It’s so sad, for many different reasons.  You know, it’s always more dramatic when something like this happens after so many years of hard work.  He had been waiting most of his life for this moment.  And 2008 was supposed to be his biggest year yet, and all the recognition coming in, finally after all those years.  It’s so sad.  It’s strange because this past week, we got the magazines with him on the cover.

B.E.:  Two of them.

I.D.:  Yeah, two of them.  The Beat, and Global Rhythm, and then the Belize Telephone Directory is coming out with his [picture on the] cover.  And the strange thing is that all the stuff was decided well before he died.  It’s so weird.  You know?  He was supposed to be enjoying all this stuff right now.

B.E.:  It’s too much.  My heart goes out to you, and especially, as you say, after you accomplished so much.

I.D.:  To be honest, I have a lot of reasons to be very happy as well.  You know, the fact that it happened.  It could very well have not taken off for a couple more years.  The fact that all of this happened left no doubt about his legacy.  His contribution to Garifuna music and Belize is just tremendous, and the fact that we achieved that with Watina makes me extremely happy.

B.E.:  And he was supposed to be leading the Garifuna Collective on a tour.  Now you’ve had to regroup.  Tell me what this tour will now be like?

I.D.:  Basically, it’s the same Garifuna Collective that toured with Andy last year.  A fact that is very little known is that, although and he was always in the spotlight, the band, the Garifuna Collective is comprised of many talented musicians and singers in their own right.  This comes from the Watina project, where we gathered all these musicians and composers to record Watina, and now, with Andy’s death, people thought that this was the end of it.  They thought that somebody would have to step up to fill Andy’s shoes.   The reaction of the Collective was really amazing.  Immediately, everybody felt a sense of urgency to continue Andy’s mission, and they regrouped, and they started rehearsing like crazy for the past few months.  I have never seen so much dedication from any musician in Belize.  It’s been amazing.  And these guys are pretty busy.  There are teachers.  Many of them have other jobs, and they’ve been rehearsing four times a week since Andy died.

So, it’s more than just a tour.  The way they are saying it, this is a really urgent mission that they have to make sure the world doesn’t forget about Andy and about Garifuna music, and the Garifuna struggle.  I think this is the best way to explain how these guys feel right now.  The last rehearsal was two days ago, and I got to hear the Umalali ladies.   We have included one more which is Silvia Blanco, the daughter of Sophia Blanco.

B.E.:  Let’s just go through the singers that are going to be on this tour.

I.D.:  Okay, it’s Silvia and Sophia Blanco and Desere Diego.  The three of them sing on the Umalali album.  And then the musicians are the same musicians as on the past tour.  Rolando “Chichiman” Sosa is the core arranger of Watina, and a mainstay of the Collective.  Carlos Perrote is the Musical Director.  Al Ovando is the rhythm guitarist, and also he is the recording and mixing engineer for both albums.  That’s one of the other things we do in Belize.  We have to multitask as well.  We have a huge pool of people, but Al loves the stage so much that he really wanted to be on tour, despite the fact that he is perhaps the only engineer in the country who can produce a good quality recording.

B.E.:  So he will be badly missed while he’s on tour.

I.D.:  All recording stops while he is on tour.  Then we have Joshua Arana, who is the youngest in the band.  He is the Garifuna lead drummer and he has been playing with and on for ever.  Then we have Sam Harris who is a guitarist from Belize who has been playing with Andy for many years as well, and he contributed in watching a.  Then we have Wilton Lewis, who is the bass player, who did the last tour as well.  So like I said, and the commitment and the dedication is all there.

B.E.:  Is Aurelio Martinez coming?

I.D.:  Yes.  The two lead singers will be Lloyd Augustine, who is one of the more promising young artists in Belize.  He contributed with the song “Gagambadida” on the Watina album with Andy.  That was a duet that they did.  So he will be performing most of Andy’s songs from the Watina album.  He is much younger than Andy, so he grew up being a huge fan of Andy’s.  So it’s kind of his responsibility to sing Andy’s songs in the show.  Then we have Aurelio Martinez, who will perform some songs from the Watina album, the ones that he participated on, plus a special section on paranda music in the show.  This concert will feature songs from Paul Nabor that Andy always performed with Nabor, and even when Nabor wasn’t on tour, and he always did at least two or three of these songs from his good friend, Nabor.  So Aurelio will be doing those songs, and a couple of new compositions of his own.

B.E.:  Will Paul Nabor be there?

I.D.:  No, unfortunately, we had to scale down due to financial reasons.  We are still looking at flying him in for certain dates of the tour, but he won’t be able to do the entire tour.

B.E.:  Tell me a little more about Lloyd Augustine?

I.D.:  He is a lot younger.  He comes out of, I would say, one of the most important punta rock bands of the 90s, which is the Punta Rebels.  The Punta  Rebels were comprised of a bunch of young kids who basically revolutionized punta rock sound into something that was more pop than before.  Punta rock in the past had been mostly very Caribbean influenced, even Andy’s old stuff sounded a lot more like Soca and other Caribbean rhythms.  These guys translated the American influence into punta rock, and they were hugely popular.  So Lloyd comes from that group.  He became a young star and then he went solo, continuing with punta rock, but then, he did a switch to paranda.  In part thanks to Andy.  This whole notion that the world pays attention to paranda music made a huge impact in Belize with the younger artists.  So he immediately looked at making the switch, which he did.

One of the things that is funny is the question I got asked the most in Belize after Andy’s death was who was going to replace Andy?  For some reason everybody felt it was my responsibility to anoint somebody.  You know?  And for weeks I saw this positioning by several artists.  They would go on the air.  It was almost like a campaign, and people would come to me recommending people.  I even had somebody calling me and asking me whether Andy’s 12-year-old kid was good enough to join the band.  I can understand that kind of hold that and he left, and people were quick to try to fill it.  But I kept saying that there is no way.  And he is not only irreplaceable, but also, the whole point of Andy’s mission was not about Andy.  It was not about being a star.  It was not about oneself.  It was for the music as a whole.  The culture as a whole.  So whoever wants to take up that space would have to grow into that role.  It took Andy many years to realize these things.  And he comes from very humble beginnings, and basically he educated himself to become a great spokesperson for his people, which is what I think he really was.  He was a teacher.  More than an artist.

What is funny with all this is that when people started hearing my side of this, this whole approach….  I just said anybody can join the collective.  You just have to come and want to join the band, and come and rehearse.  Anyway, without me telling Lloyd, without me inviting him, he started coming to the rehearsals.

B.E.:  Interesting.  So Lloyd has never been on the tour before?  We’ve never seen him over here?

I.D.:  No, no, no.  Exactly.  He just did that duet on Watina, and he loved and he very much.  The two were friends.  But he never took the approach that he was part of the collective.

B.E.:  But then went and he died, something changed.  He just came along and answered the call.

I.D.:  Yes.  He wanted to be a part of it.  And he wanted to be a part of it not in the sense that, “Okay, I am the new lead singer of the band.”  No, he just wanted to fit in.

B.E.:  That’s wonderful.  I look forward to meeting him.  Now, what about Aurelio?  He has his own career and his own band right?

I.D.:  Yes, yes, totally.  Aurelio is basically joining in because, one, he collaborated with Andy for many, many years.  They were very good friends.  And they complement each other very well.  All the shows that they have done have been even better than either of them on their own.  And they knew that.  That was the basis of their friendship also.  So when Andy died, Aurelio took the next flight from Belize to be with all of us.  Because he lives in Honduras.  As you say, he has his own band.  He has his own solo career.  I just came back from Honduras last week where we recorded his latest album.  So he has his own thing going, but he always, always has been very close to all the Garifuna projects I have done with Stonetree and with Andy.  So he goes all the way back to the Paranda  project in 1999, where he sings three songs and one duet with Andy.  Then, and he sang one song with Aurelio on Garifuna Soul, which was the album that kind of launched Aurelio.   And then, Aurelio sang on Watina, on Andy’s record.  He contributed on two songs.  So that collaboration has always been there.  The only reason that he’s not a formal member of the Collective is that he had his own thing going long before.

B.E.:  So this is quite a special thing that he will be part of this tour.

I.D.:  Yes.  Totally. 

B.E.:  Let’s talk a little bit more about the Umalali connection.  Were the women always scheduled to be part of this tour?

I.D.:  Yes.   The idea was to integrate them into the Collective, which I have to admit was a much more challenging…  Is easier said than done.  And the reason is that, even though these women have such amazing voices and personalities and stories, the fact is that none of them are professional singers.  So it has been a challenge to have them doing these concerts.  Perhaps you saw a little bit of that at WOMEX.  But the fact that they are so dedicated, to me, that is the most inspiring thing.  So it’s not just about the music and themselves, but about really representing.  They have been working a lot, a lot, a lot in the past few months.  I’ve seen an amazing improvement in all of them.

B.E.:  That’s interesting.  I was struck by what you wrote in the liner notes of the Umalali CD, about how it is not really their lifestyle to be sitting around playing music.  Their women with a lot of work to do, and they would show up the studio thinking they were in a single song on one they can go back to work.  So you’ve been dealing with a very different kind of mindset.  These are really folk artists, whose creative and work lives are not separate.

I.D.:  The first thing that you’ll sense working with them is that they don’t need this.

B.E.:  They are doing you a favor.

I.D.:  More or less, yes.  It’s like it’s more about feeling pride.  It’s more about not disappointing.  And now, it’s all about Andy, of course.  It’s a lot of things other than just making a career, and becoming recognized.  And, obviously, making money.  And of course, they don’t make a lot of money. 

B.E.:  But in the process, you feel they’ve really become performing artists in a sense that they never were before, right?

I.D.:  Totally.  I think that the best thing that could happen with the Umalali project is that it convinces women in the Garifuna community that they can dedicate themselves to music, and be rewarded by.  Traditionally, although they have had a huge responsibility of carrying on the culture and music…  I mean, the fact that the vast majority of Garifuna material is composed by women. 

B.E.:  That was probably what inspired you in the first place.  You have been working on this women’s project for a long time.

I.D.:  Yes.  The first thing that grabbed my attention was when I was working with all these backing vocalists, and I realized that they knew more songs than all the men together.  You know?  You would ask them to sing a song, and they could go on for hours without repeating a single melody.  And all that just goes to show that the women have been the bearers of a lot of the musical traditions in Garifuna culture.  And that was not recognized at the industry level.  The fact was, it was only men who were doing recordings.  It was only men who formed groups.  It was only men who toured.  And also, the man had a very businesslike approach to music.  “Okay, we’re going to do a record.  So how many songs you need?  10 songs.  Okay so I will pick my 10 songs.”  Not a single one more.  Anyway, the fact was I always felt that the women’s music was more just part of their lives.

B.E.:  That impression you had that the women knew more songs than the men, that goes all the way back to the Paranda project in 1999?

I.D.:  Yes.  That was from the very beginning, in 97, 98.

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