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live album, mixing a bunch of rhythms, including Garifuna drum- ming. At that concert I realised that performing was not for me – I was too nervous. The same week I went into a professional studio for the first time and remember feeling ‘this is it – I could live inside this place’. I became fascinated with the whole process of produc- tion. That’s when I decided to make recordings and start a label.”
Duran would return two or three times a year to Belize from Cuba. On one trip home, at a hotel bar in Belize City, he met Pala- cio who was the leading exponent of punta rock, an electrified update of the most immediately danceable of the Garifuna rhythms. “Punta rock was a craze in Belize, starting in the early ’80s, and became the country’s national music. Andy was its biggest star – by far. I was just 20, and remember telling him about all those great musicians that I was at school with, and said we should do something one day, and he was like ‘We should make a record. When do we start?’”
“I’ll never forget that moment. It was the beginning of Stone- tree. Soon afterwards we did Keimoun [1995] – making all the arrangements and recording the horns and some guitars in Cuba, but the Garifuna drums and the vocals right here across the street. It was like some English kid fresh from school working with the Beatles on his first gig.”
At the time there were no Belizean labels. “There’d been a couple of earlier – and great – attempts. In the ’50s, and up to the ’70s, there was CES formed by Mr Compton Fairweather who recorded all the same bands that used to play in my community centre. In the ’80s Andy was one of the guys behind Sunrise Records. He’d got a grant from the UK on a cultural exchange pro- gramme, working in London where he got training with a four- track tape recorder. Sunrise released cassette tapes of local bands but died out early in the ’90s.”
fter Keimoun, Duran started producing albums to document what was going on in Belize in the coun- try’s major ethnic communities: indigenous Maya in the west, north, and south; Creoles (mixed African and European) and blacks in the centre around Belize City; and the Garifuna along the southern coastline around Dan- griga. “One of our first releases, Maya K'ekchi Strings, was of Mayan harp. Another, Lugua And The Larubeya Drummers with a traditional Garifuna ensemble of drums and vocals, and Berry Wine Days with Mr Peters was calypso creole accordeon. I was try- ing to establish a base for Stonetree.”
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“That original mandate quickly shifted to a more innovative approach, where we started blending influences and playing more with the music and arrangements. You can’t be making traditional records all your life; as a creative person it can be very stagnating. I want to demonstrate to the newer generations that traditions are something you can work with and make your own. I’ve always firmly believed it’s the best chance we have of these things surviv- ing – when they’re still useful and relevant to the times we’re liv- ing in. Andy was also a huge believer in that, and never afraid to take chances with the music, even if he pissed off a few purists.”
Stonetree is forging a distinctive made-in-Belize sound. The former British Honduras only gained its independence in 1981. “It’s a work in progress,” says Duran. “There’s a lot to be done in this new nation, and being part of that is an immense privilege. Though I work mainly with Garifuna musicians and traditions I always see that as part of the bigger picture. Belize is a fascinating place because of how the cultures co-exist – there are few other countries where this happens as harmoniously.”
For Duran music has always been about bringing people and cultures together. “Even though we may be making a Garifuna record, there’s Mayan guitar on almost every track, and a creole jawbone [scraper and rattle]. With Wátina we were playing around with all kinds of different grooves and bass-lines. Some of the rhythms aren’t traditional. Andy and I were shitting our pants when it came out, because it was so different from anything before. But when the Garifuna people loved it, when we went back to Dangriga and heard it playing on every sound system, that was bigger than the Womex award for us. For that short period before Andy’s death [in January 2008] Wátina was like a shooting star that basically transformed the country.”
Duran has also helped breathe new life into an older stylistic blend of the Garifuna that’s known as paranda – a gorgeous hybrid of Hispanic, Caribbean, and African influences, with a gen- tle bluesy feel. It was on the verge of disappearing when Duran started visiting Garifuna communities in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras in 1997-98 to record its last few practitioners for Stone- tree’s compilation Paranda. When he brought in artists to add to the field-recording sound, he realised he was drawing on the same core group for most projects. In 1999 they became the Garifuna All-Star Band, and toured under that name, switching to Garifuna Collective just before Wátina’s release.
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