UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Garifuna Popular Music
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Garifuna Popular Music “Renewed”: Authenticity, Tradition, and Belonging in Garifuna World Music A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology by Amy Lynn Frishkey 2016 © Copyright by Amy Lynn Frishkey 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Garifuna Popular Music “Renewed”: Authenticity, Tradition, and Belonging in Garifuna World Music by Amy Lynn Frishkey Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Roger Savage, Chair For almost thirty years, the electronically driven dance music punta rock remained the only popular music genre indigenous to the Garifuna, an African-Amerindian group based along Central America’s Caribbean coast with U.S. diasporic communities. In 2007, however, a new genre ushered in by the award-winning album Wátina (I Called Out) by Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective effectively displaced punta rock as the musical icon of Garifuna identity and modernity to the outside world and attained much broader appeal. What I term Garifuna World Music (GWM) arose from the vision of Belizean producer Ivan Duran and Belizean Garifuna punta rock star Palacio to import the acoustic and reflective emphases of traditional music into the commercial realm in order to promote cultural and linguistic preservation internationally. However, they also conceived the genre as a means for securing Garifuna music a foothold within the world music industry, presenting a sustainable music career as a viable option for ii Garifuna musicians for the first time. Periodic tourist witnessing of secular traditional song- dance performances has long been a component of community life, yet the effects of musically dovetailing tradition with Euro-Anglo cosmopolitan desires are newly felt. This dissertation considers GWM as a nexus between these desires and assertions of cultural identity. Supported by fieldwork undertaken in Belize and Guatemala, I combine ethnography, historiography, and musical analysis not only to examine the multiple hybridities of Garifuna culture as they manifest in Garifuna popular music genres but also their interactions with the state of the millennial world music industry. Specifically, I ask “What was the work of GWM intended to do?” and, in turn, “What is the work actually doing?” While GWM performs industry notions of “authenticity,” rooted in esteem granted to activism, African heritage, nostalgia, and exemplarity, many punta rock musicians in Belizean Garifuna communities today consider it “authentic” for a different reason: its adoption of traditional music practices, especially those of an acoustic guitar-based men’s genre called paranda, as the starting point for new compositions. Although envisioned and promulgated by a small group, and commercially lucrative for just as few, GWM has generated both local and diasporic pride and provided a means by which young Garifuna men can translate the ethos of their elders into the language of their own highly mediated experiences. iii The dissertation of Amy Lynn Frishkey is approved. Anthony Seeger Timothy Rice Robert W. Fink Roger Savage, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures vi List of Musical Examples vii Acknowledgments viii Vita xii Chapter One 1 Introduction Chapter Two 21 “World Music” and Its Discourses Chapter Three 60 Garifuna Cultural History Chapter Four 108 Garifuna Traditional Music-Making Chapter Five 145 Garifuna Popular Music I: Punta Rock Chapter Six 208 Garifuna Popular Music II: Garifuna World Music Chapter Seven 262 Building Identity within Garifuna Popular Music: Problems and Promises of Local Musicians’ Relationships Chapter Eight 310 Conclusion References 324 v LIST OF FIGURES 1.1: Aurelio Martinez and Youssou N’Dour 2 3.1: Sofia Blanco outside her home in Livingston, Guatemala 87 4.1: Primero, segunda, and shakas in Seine Bight, Belize 110 4.2: Musician playing turtle shells in Southern Dangriga, Belize 110 4.3: Traditional garaón ensemble in Seine Bight Village, Belize 111 5.1: Supa G and band performing at Ecumenical High School, Dangriga, Belize 163 5.2: Punta dancing at Ecumenical High School, Dangriga, Belize 163 5.3: Reckless and his band performing at The Rivera Bar, Dangriga, Belize 164 5.4: E-flyer for the 2008 Las Vegas Punta Fest 195 5.5: E-flyer for Punta Rock Jamfest 2000 in Los Angeles 196 5.6: E-flyer for a 2009 punta rock concert in the Bronx, New York City 197 5.7: E-flyer for 2009 Punta Rock Beach Bash in Hopkins Village, Belize 197 5.8: Concert with punta rock musicians at Buda’s Disco, Triunfo de la Cruz, Honduras 198 5.9: DVD cover for “Noche de Estrellas Catrachas En Vivo” 199 5.10: DVD cover for “Best of the Best Puntarock Concert Vol. 5” 200 6.1: Ivan Duran and Andy Palacio accepting the 2007 WOMEX Award 227 7.1: Andy Palacio and Paul Nabor with the Garifuna Collective 263 7.2: Album cover for Wátina (2007) 264 7.3: Belizean Music Icons roundtable, Music Week 2007, Belize City, Belize 286 vi LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES 4.1: Traditional core segunda patterns 111 5.1: Chord progressions for “Tu Eres Mi Amor” by Kazzabe 179 6.1: Melody for Verse 1 of “Águyuha Nidúheñu,” Hopkins Village, Belize, 1981 215 6.2: Melody for Verse 1, Section A of “Águyuha Nidúheñu” from Wátina, 2007 218 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My long-standing interest in both cultural anthropology and Garifuna music begins with the late J. Jefferson MacKinnon, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. His Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course at Collin County Community College in Plano, TX, not only decided my undergraduate major but led to my participation in his archeological fieldschool in Placencia Village on the coast of southern Belize, devoted to the reconstruction of post-Classic Mayan salt trade routes. While I enjoyed sifting, drawing, and measuring pottery shards, it was a group performance of punta in the Garifuna village of Seine Bight five miles north, arranged by Jeff’s wife and colleague, sociologist Carol Jane Key, that set me on my current course. I am grateful to them both for their encouragement and their passion for cultural diversity and interpersonal warmth. It is thanks to Jeff, who left us too early, that I began to conceive of myself as a viable writer and thinker in the academic realm. I must also thank Steven Friedson at the University of North Texas, who introduced me to the discipline of ethnomusicology and whose graduate-level seminar devoted to music, healing, and trance provided the forum for learning more about the culture I had encountered three years prior, culminating in a seminar paper relating music and movement in the dügü ancestor propitiation ceremony. The members of my dissertation committee—Roger Savage, Anthony Seeger, Tim Rice, and Robert Fink—have provided the guiding lights for my graduate school experience. I was repeatedly drawn to Roger’s seminars demonstrating the explanatory power of hermeneutical phenomenology when applied to questions regarding culture and creativity, as well as his commitment to Socratic teaching. Tony has been a mentor par excellence, especially for an viii introvert like me!, and one of the most perceptive and just people I have ever met, constantly alerting me to aspects I hadn’t considered. Tim’s love of ethnomusicology and dedication to its excellence as a field, coupled with his formidability in the realm of rhetoric, has been a constant source of inspiration. Dazzled by Bob’s brilliant lectures and incisive critique, like so many who see him in action, I quickly discovered his generous spirit and open mind in the course of working with him on my master’s paper on trip-hop. I am indebted to the UCLA Graduate Division for awarding me a Summer Research Mentorship Fellowship to conduct my initial fieldwork on Garifuna music and culture, to the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music Student Opportunity Fund for dissertation fieldwork support, and to the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology for a conference travel award that enabled me to present results of my research at the 2008 Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference. Profuse thanks to a number of my peers from UCLA who have proved not only supportive friends through the years but also terrific role models and providers of incisive feedback: Kevin Miller, Charles Sharp, Angela Rodel, Rivka Becker, Tanya Merchant, Birgitta Johnson, Anoosh Jorjorian, Dale Chapman, Caroline O’Meara, and Stephan Pennington. A special shout-out to my dear friend Eleanor Lipat-Chesler for continually wowing me with her brilliance and getting me over so many humps in grad school and in life. I am also thankful to colleagues Megan Rancier and Jeff Janeczko for reading and commenting on my earliest dissertation chapter attempts. I owe a huge debt to Ivan Duran at Stonetree Records for providing me with an internship and putting me in touch with many of the incredible Garifuna musicians I had to pleasure of speaking with and hearing at live shows: Andy Palacio (R.I.P.), Aurelio Martinez, Sofia Blanco, ix Desere Arana Diego, Chella Torres, Adrian “Doc” Martinez, and Justo Miranda. Ivan also joined me with Canadian film and audio recordists Olivier Cheneval and Dax Hixson with The Sound Alliance in Dangriga, Belize, which led to conversations with punta rock musicians Lindsford “Supa G” Martinez, Lloyd Augustine, Felix “Reckless” Flores, Vida, Supa G’s manager Kevin Martinez, Allan “Baba” Castillo, and buyei John Mariano (R.I.P.). I must also