Umalali

More than ten years ago, Ivan Duran, a white Belizian, started Stonetree Records to document the music of the Garifuna (gar-RI-foo-nah), one of Central America's forgotten minorities. Some history: the Garifuna are descendants of African slaves who escaped from a massive shipwreck on the island of Saint Vincent in 1635. The island of Saint Vincent was inhabited by descendent's of a Native tribe from mainland South America called the Kalipuna. They had invaded the island and slaughtered all the men of the Arawak Indians who had lived there and took their women for wives. When...