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COPYRIGHT 2002 Center For Black Music Research
The Garinagu, commonly known as the Garifuna, are a people of West African and Amerindian descent who live along the Caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and who share a common language, system of customs and beliefs, series of ancestor veneration rituals, and repertoire of music and dance. The word Garinagu refers to the people as a whole, whereas the term Garifuna refers to the language, the culture, and a person in the singular form. (1) The emigration of Garinagu during the past five decades has resulted in sizable populations in large urban centers in the United States, namely, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Although hegemony, acculturation, modernity, syncretization, and American popular culture have adversely affected the retention of indiginous Garifuna customs in the United States (especially those related to ancestory veneration), the commodification of Garifuna music, art, and dance has resulted in an increased interest in traditional media of cultural expression. The most celebrated of these media is punta, a dance song genre that is a symbolic reenactment of the cock-and-hen mating dance. This couples dance features rapid movement of the buttocks and hips and a motionless upper torso, to the accompaniment of songs performed responsorially, membranophones, rattles, and occasionally, hollow turtle shells that are struck with a mallet and conch shell trumpets. Since the mid-1980s, punta has experienced a revitalization through its immensely popular derivative, punta rock.
With the birth and subsequent development of punta rock in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, teenaged to middle-aged Garinagu have found a creative contemporary musical outlet for the affirmation of ethnic identity. Punta rock is an adaptation of punta, from which its name is borrowed, and to a lesser extent paranda, a folk-song genre for voice and guitar. Today, punta rock is the musical craze among youth and young adults in Belize and in Garifuna communities in the United States. In Guatemala and Honduras, punta rock is second only to the salsa-like music and dance known as cumbia. This study relies heavily on interpretations of culture bearers of punta, punta rock, and related musical media from Belize, Honduras, and the United States and on fieldwork conducted in Dangriga, Belize, in 2000.
The duple-meter rhythms of punta and paranda are very similar and are the primary rhythmic basis for punta rock. Songs are performed in the indigenous Awarak and Carib-based language of the Garinagu and are often simply contemporary adaptations of traditional Garifuna songs. However, the indigenous language and the rhythms of punta rock are, for many performers, paradigms for the expression of traditional and contemporary urban-influenced ethnic ideas. Ideals expressed by younger American Garifuna performers typically reflect the influence of African-American rap and hip-hop urban culture. For many such musicians, creating and performing punta rock are ways of reaffirming enthic identity through contemporary popular music. The use of traditional punta and paranda songs found in Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala symbolizes the reaffirmation of an identity deeply rooted in the origin, history, and struggle of a common people.
In this article, 1 consider punta (including its derivative punta rock) as iconic of Garifuna ethnicity and modernity. It is the most celebrated of the indigenous dance-song genres, and it permeates performances of both secular and semi-sacred rituals. Punta, as poetic folk art, is the genre through which social commentary is most frequently expressed. The development of punta rock reveals that, musically, traditional punta is amenable to instrumental and rhythmic augmentation because of its repetitive duple-meter structure. Punta rock was born out of the need to create a new and exciting genre of Garifuna music based on a fusion of elements of culture and music that express indigenous and urban social ideals. As such, it maintains its popularity because it incorporates the traditional (the old) and the contemporary (the modern). Modernity--used here as a metaphor for change--functions as the contextual canvas of contemporary musical society on which the sounds of the indigenous punta are retooled or colored through a mosaic of popular American and Caribbean music, namely reggae, calypso, and soca. Through the birth and subsequent metamorphosis of punta rock, punta has remained constant as a strong yet pliable expression of ethnicity through music in Garifuna history.
Most historical accounts of the origin of the Garinagu suggest that they are the product of a cultural and racial amalgamation between Amerindians on St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles and Africans who swam to the nearby island after two Spanish slave ships wrecked in a storm en route to Barbados in 1635 (see, for example, Taylor 1951, 18). However, the origin of the Garinagu is also believed to be directly related to interaction between Amerindians (Awarak and Carib) and the Mandinga of Mall, West Africa, on St. Vincent in 1307 and 1312 A.D. (Lawrence 1992, 169-214). Neither account calls into question the fact that the birth of the "Garifuna Nation" was most certainly the result of the union between Africans and Amerindians. Both groups' identities are deeply rooted in (1) ancestor veneration, (2) songs of social commentary and communal ideals, and (3) a relationship of reciprocity and respect between the people and the environment in which they live.
Garinagu frequently use the term Garifuna Nation when referring to the Garinagu throughout the diaspora. Historical justification for the use of this term can be attributed to the existence of various tribes of Garinagu under the rules of the paramount chief Chatuye, on the island of St. Vincent. The Garinagu began to migrate to Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua following the defeat of Chatuye by the British in 1795 and the subsequent exile of more than two thousand Garinagu to Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras in 1797. (2)
In 1802, Garinagu from Honduras made a series of landings in Belize. The largest migration occurred on November 19, 1832, when Garinagu fled from Roatan and found safe haven in Dangriga following a massacre of many Garinagu during the civil war in Honduras. Since 1977, November 19 has been recognized throughout Belize as National Garifuna Settlement Day and celebrated as an official public and bank holiday. Today, six Garifuna communities are located in Belize. From north to south, these communities are Dangriga (the place of origin of punta rock), Hopkins, Seine Bight, Georgetown, Punta Gorda, and Barranco. The largest Garifuna settlements are the towns of Dangriga and Punta Gorda. A number of Garinagu also live in Belize City, the largest and most densely populated city in the country. Three Garifuna settlements are located in Guatemala, with Livingston, a town near Barranco, being the largest. The vast majority of Central American Garinagu live in Honduras, where there are as many as forty-six settlements. Unfortunately, inhabitants in the two Garifuna communities in Nicaragua have all but lost the use of their indigenous language and many of their traditional rituals.
According to conservative estimates, in 1993 there were approximately 225,000 Garinagu in Central America and 90,000 in the United States (M. Palacio 1993, 11). Because most Central American Garifuna towns and villages were settled as fishing communities, they are located on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. The Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book 2003 (July estimates) reports the population of Belize to be 266,440, with Garinagu making up 6.1 percent; that of Guatemala to be 13,909,384, with Garinagu, whites, and others making up less than 2 percent; Honduras to be 6,669,789, with blacks (primarily Garinagu) making up 2 percent; and Nicaragua to be 5,128,517, with blacks making up 9 percent (Central Intelligence Agency 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). Garinagu comprise a small percentage of the black population in Nicaragua. The majority of Garinagu are from families located in Bluefields and total approximately two thousand in number (Scruggs 1998b, 752).
In the Lesser Antilles, geographic boundaries and the use of a common music, langugage, and cultural practices defined the Garifuna Nation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, the Garifuna Nation of the postmodern world is primarily defined by ancestral lineage, history, and the retention of shared practices and beliefs, although this rentention may vary greatly from one geographic area to the next.
The purpose of this inquiry about Garifuna ethnicity in the diaspora is to show how poetry, music, and dance in punta and punta rock continue to function as media of ethnic identity despite changes in social context and environment. The role of punta and punta rock has not changed, although culture, politics, and social life in the United States and the Caribbean have greatly influenced their development. In this study, Garifuna ethnicity is read through punta and its contemporary derivative punta rock. In doing so, I examine poetry, music, and dance as interdependent media of cultural expression in which poetry reads life, music reads poetry, and dance reads music. Of significance here is the premise that punta, as the progenitor of punta rock, is a genre that readily adapts to changes in physical and social context because it is first an expression of identity through language and text and second an interpretation of this identity through sound and movement.
Punta, paranda, and punta rock will be discussed first, with emphasis on ethnicity as expressed in towns and villages and in urban centers. Modernity is examined because it has been influential in the expression of Garifuna ethnicity and in the origin, development, and subsequent commodification of punta rock. Conclusions concerning the cultural and social significance of punta and punta rock are drawn from interviews conducted with Garifuna culture bearers, some of whom are social scientists trained in the West. These include Garifuna folk dancers, punta rock musicians, record promoters, traditional healers, anthropologists, and linguists. And comparisons of traditional and contemporary arrangements of a popular folk tune will show how music, dance, and language serve as interrelated media through which Garinagu express cultural identity and social solidarity. The analysis of the song "Malate isien gayein waruguti" (Love That Is Bought Is Worthless) by culture bearers from Belize, Honduras, and Los Angeles addresses stylistic differences and the influence of other genres of popular music.
Punta and Paranda
Punta is the most popular of the secular Garifuna dance-song genres. It is a Garifuna rhythm, a type of song usually composed by women, and a genre of dance that is a symbolic reenactment of the cock-and-hen mating dance. The dance represents sexual dialogue between male and female dancers, who attempt to outdo each other with unique stylized movements. It is characterized...
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