2007 was an amazing year for Belize’s beloved singer and bandleader Andy Palacio.  It was a year full of awards, landmarks, interviews, and showcase performances.  With the album Watina, which he co-created with producer Ivan Duran and the Garifuna Collective, Andy accomplished a significant breakthrough for his ancestral Garifuna culture, and the recognition this instant-classic album received, he went a good ways towards achieving one of his principle life ambitions—to validate and preserve that culture.  Anyone who saw Andy speak or perform during this past year came away energized by his vitality, charisma, and inspiring sense of purpose.  All of this makes it nearly impossible to fathom the news that on January 19, 2008, Andy died in Belize City after a stroke and heart attack.  

Andy was a rare fellow.  On a professional level, he brought together the talent, wisdom, stamina, patience and vision it takes to do great things in a world of music where the script is unwritten, and the rules constantly under revision.  As a social activist, he was articulate and persuasive, and it can fairly be said that no one has done more for the Garifuna of Central America than he did.  As a man he was always warm and modest. 

In the weeks, months, and years to come, much will be written and said about Andy, his life and his work.  At this sad and shocking moment, we at Afropop Worldwide simply want to say, “Andy, we are privileged and honored to have shared in your journey.  No one can doubt you had much more to give, but while we have all been robbed of that future, we are thankful for all that you did give during your short time on earth.  You were one of the special ones, and we will miss you always.”

Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow

It seems like yesterday when I first met Andy Palacio at WOMEX ’97 in Marseilles, France.  Andy wasn’t performing that year, he was there to promote Garifuna culture.  When I bumped into Andy, he captivated me with the amazing story of how the Garifuna are descendants of escaped slaves who survived from a crashed slave ship near St. Vincent, and after a battle with England, the 2,000 survivors were deported to Central America.    We stayed up until 5 a.m. chatting about Garifuna music, their culture, how they make their own instruments, how their language and culture was severely threatened (Garifuna is a blend of Arawak and several African tongues, and is the only language spoken by Blacks in the Americas that isn’t based on a European tongue).  Promoting his own recording wasn’t his primary mission (and I would soon learn, that his recordings were magnificent).  What Andy cared about was the culture of his people, the culture of an ethnic group that had resisted slavery. His goal was to use music as tool for cultural preservation.

Two months later, I bought a plane ticket to Central America.  Upon arriving in Belize, Andy and his producer Ivan Duran were giddy with excitement about the new recording called Paranda they were working on.  It featured elderly Garifuna guitarists that Andy had found in rural communities in Honduras, Guatemala and Belize.  It sounded like Cuban son, American blues, with African percussion all rolled into one. Five minutes later, I was giddy too, and decided to change my plane ticket so I could spend 3 extra weeks in Belize, traveling dirt roads, water taxis, spending hours, sometimes days getting to remote villages along the Caribbean coast to get to the remote villages where these elderly Garifuna guitarists lived to share their stories on the radio program Afropop Worldwide.

I ended up spending much of the next two years going back and forth to Belize, and in the end, we managed to get that CD of Garifuna guitar music released by a major label, Warner Brothers.  Sadly, their division that agreed to put out the CD, folded right around the time the Paranda CD was released.   We soon learned that a major label had not interest in selling 5-10 thousand copies of magnificent (and threatened) music.  To them, it was peanuts.  We took solace in that although it never reached the commercial success we had dreamed of, it was a small step to help put Garifuna music on the global map.

Andy Palacio and Ivan Duran went back to Belize and began working on what would become Palacio’s masterpiece, Watina.  It drew upon the complete spectrum of Garifuna rhythms, it was impeccably produced.  The songs were passionate, such as “Amzyengu” which asked questions like, “Who will I speak my own Garifuna language to when I get old?”  These were questions that went to my soul, who as a Jewish kid growing up in Pittsburgh wondered who, after my grandparents and great-grandparents passed on, would be left to speak and sing in Yiddish.

Watina was released in 2007 by an independent label Cumbancha, headed by Jacob Edgar, who shares Duran’s and Palacio’s passion for Garifuna music, and it deservedly won nearly every prize in what we call “world music” (including the WOMEX and UNESCO Artist for Peace awards).

Still, despite the accolades, what Andy cared about was promoting his culture.  He had the emotion of a new father seeing his kids take their first steps when one of his mentors, Paul Nabor (now nearly 80 years old) took the stage with him last year.  Andy wasn’t just the Garifuna’s greatest musician.  He was one of the world’s leading cultural ambassadors for threatened music.

When I head that Andy Palacio passed away from a massive stroke this past weekend, I was immediately stricken with grief.  Who can fill his shoes?  Who will have the passion to continue the fight for Garifuna music against the massive forces of cultural imperialism?  Who will sing these songs?  Who will create new ones?

Fortunately, in Andy’s short life, he answered those questions.  .He lived just 47 years, and in that time, completely rescued the Garifuna culture. There already is a new generation of young Garifuna who are growing up knowing that there is a future for their music and culture with new-found pride.

For generations, people will be speaking to you Andy, and singing to you, in Garifuna.

We miss you terribly.

Dan Rosenberg

Read Afropop Worldwide's 2007 interview with Andy Palacio