31 f Tree Of The Nation
Ivan Duran’s Stonetree Records has put Belize on the world’s musical atlas. Tony Montague pays a visit.
F
rom the top of the ancient Mayan temple at Xunantunich, on a rain-forested ridge in the west of Belize, you can make out the white, almost windowless,
studio home of Stonetree Records. The independent label, based in the laidback border town of Benque Viejo, has put this remarkably diverse country of fewer than 350,000 people squarely on the world music map.
Stonetree has released almost 40 albums, most famously Wátina which bagged a coveted Womex Award in 2007 for the late great Andy Palacio and his friend, Stonetree’s founder and producer, Ivan Duran. It’s hard to think of another contemporary label that’s made such an impact on a developing nation.
Inside the small studio are racks with some two dozen guitars; on the wall the electro-acoustic model played by Palacio, its body covered in signatures like tattoos
of all the Garifuna Collective team, and on a shelf the two Womex statuettes given to Palacio and Duran in Seville. And the large console at which Duran and Stonetree’s engineer Al Ovando sit.
Stonetree’s story is that of Duran, who grew up in Benque in the ’70s and ’80s just across the unpaved lane from the studio. “We’re only three blocks from the commu- nity centre here, where there used to be dances with bands playing Caribbean music, some Latin, and a lot of Belizean styles usually until 3 or 4 am,” he recalls. “And every year my parents would drive to Dangriga for Garifuna Settlement Day on November 19, a national holiday celebrat- ing the arrival of the Garifuna people on the coast of Belize. It’s an all-day party, basically a carnival with drumming in the streets, and a parade.”
Duran became inspired by the rhythms and percussion of the Garifuna, descendants of maroons, escaped African
slaves, who mixed with indigenous Caribs on St Vincent in the eastern Caribbean. After fiercely resisting colonial forces for more than a century they were rounded up and transported west in 1797 to Roatan Island in the Gulf of Honduras, from where they dispersed along the Caribbean coast of Central America in small communities from Belize to Nicaragua. “In school I realised my love for music was mostly African-based, and I didn’t have to look anywhere else to go back to the roots. Making that link to Belize was extremely important for me. It all made sense.”
After some years of playing guitar Duran went to Cuba to study music at the National Arts School [ENA] in Havana, where he boarded with the finest young musicians on the island. “I was in Cuba six years, and it was an amazing experience. Whatever I learned there I connected back to Belize. In the end I got bored of the aca- demic stuff and formed a band. We made a
The Garifuna Collective: Desiree Diego,Joshua Arana, Denmark Flores, Sam Harris, Mohobub Flores, Lloyd Augustine and Chela Torres
Photo: Peter Rakossy
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