Music from Other Worlds (subtitle: 'Listen to a Fool)
Garifuna, Umalali Mérua "...and so you stay among yourselves listening to Peruvian groups with the bagpipe that only a handful are listening to and that not even their relatives buy!" (quote)
HERE I AM! PRESENT! I, the conceited know-it-all, frequenting the most foul-smelling and hidden niches, saying "I will never be part of a majority," like that guy in that movie... I propose you listen to some of the most unimaginable stuff that has crossed my hands and ears over the years. You, listen to a fool, lose 5 minutes of your time listening (reading, watching, eating, smelling...) to the same things you already know how they are, which you are not risking; what simply happens is that your brain atrophies.
16) Umalali
Umalali is the musician/producer from Belize, Ivan Duran. Duran had an idea: to bring to light the songs of Garifuna women. The Garifuna are the descendants of shipwrecked African slaves who intermarried with Indigenous people and lived on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent in the 17th century.
In 1790, they were sent by British authorities to Roatán Island off the Central American coast, and soon created settlements in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The terms Zambo, Cafuzo, Lobo, and, of course, Garifuna were originally used to label people of African and Indigenous descent. They have since remained in common usage in Latin America, in more generic and often derogatory terms, to also designate anyone of African origin.
Duran recorded the songs of Garifuna women for 10 years; as he himself says: "The project has always been about the stories, the lives of these women, capturing the essence of their voices and putting them in a modern context. I was looking for songs that people around the world could appreciate for their musicality and melodies, not just on a purely intellectual level": The field recordings were then processed in the studio and the result, to me, seems very interesting.
