Afri-Garifuna Jazz ensemble uses music to preserve a language
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A lively pulse of tortoise shell drums rippled through the bright auditorium at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian last Saturday, bringing the crowd to their feet for the unique music of James Lovell’s Afri-Garifuna Jazz Ensemble.
James Lovell, a noted musician, is also a historian who preserves his native Garifuna language through music. The Garifuna people are the descendants of Caribs Indians and Black African slaves who live in Caribbean coastal areas of Central America. Their unique but endangered language combines an Arawakan indigenous language with French, English and Spanish influence.
Lovell says he first fell in love with Garifuna music as a teenager growing up in Belize. He heard the music of a local artist, Pen Cayetano and his Turtleshell Band, and was immediately enamored by the genre’s ability to illustrate daily struggles through a joyous and warm rhythm.
“In Belize, where I grew up, we never fight. Instead we sing about problems, rather than fighting about them, to express ourselves,” Lovell says. “In times of dire straights, the rhythm soothes the mind.”
In 2011, he co-founded the Afri-Garifuna Jazz ensemble, a term Lovell came up with to describe his combination of African and Garifuna rhythms and instruments with elements of jazz music to create a distinctive sound routed in a universal message of love.
“If there is no music, there is no human existence. If there is no rhythm, there is no life,” Lovell says.
Video and screenshot curtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian
Today, the Garifuna language is still spoken in Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua and Guatemala, but is quickly being replaced by Spanish and English. It’s a situation Lovell is working to change.
“When language is lost, we lose a part of the world’s culture. All languages must survive because life’s perspective and answers don’t lie in one culture or one language,” he says. “We need all of the world’s languages to find all of the world’s answers.”
At times the stories told in song were haunting. However, Lovell’s passion and spirit moved the crowd to tap their feet and clap along with the music during the Feb. 19 Native Sounds Concert at the museum located on The National Mall.
Between songs, Lovell told the crowd about his culture and the struggles of his people. He urged the audience to send loving vibes to Garifuna people who are increasingly being forced from their ancestral lands to make way for controversial Coastal development projects.
“Garifuna live on the shores and are being taken away from their homeland and their means of livelihood… We need to show the love, we need to share the love,” he said before launching into a cover of “Hallelujah” by the late Leonard Cohen. “Let me here you say, ‘Garifuna Le.'”
The crowd rose to their feet, harmoniously chanting Garifuna Le.
—Quincey Tickner
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