Music Review | Globalfest
Individualists, Straddling Cultures and Exporting Ideas
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/arts/music/23glob.html?ref=arts From left, Giovani Chi, Adrian Martinez, Andy Palacio and Paul Nabor of Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, from Belize.
World music performers often present themselves as emissaries from a single exotic country. But at the fourth annual Globalfest, a world-music showcase with a dozen acts at Webster Hall on Sunday night....
.... Andy Palacio, from Belize, preserves the music of the Garifuna people, descended from escaped African slaves who ended up on the coast of Central America. His band, the Garifuna Collective, played electrified Garifuna music, with a guest appearance by a 78-year-old Garifuna patriarch, Paul Nabor, who had a cutting voice and some sly dance moves.
The music shuttled across the Atlantic: breezing along with a beat akin to calypso and rumba, then bearing down with unmistakably West African drumming. The Garifuna were repeatedly forced into exile, and Mr. Palacio introduced one song by summing up its lyrics: "Here is the land that used to be our home," he said. "Today it is inhabited by killers." Not all cross-cultural encounters are as benign as world music.