Aurelio - Darandi (2017)

Since childhood, Aurelio Martinez has been performing the music of his Garifuna ancestors. Descended from shipwrecked African slaves and the Island Caribs of St Vincent, the Garifuna faced imprisonment and exile in the late 18th century, eventually finding home in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Darandi is a collection of Aurelio's favourite songs from his career recorded to capture the sound of his incendiary live performances. Accompanied by some of the Garifuna world's brightest musical talents, pairing upbeat, dynamic rhythms with melancholy, heartfelt melodies, this music is both deep and danceable. Aurelio Martinez is, without exaggeration, the greatest living interpreter of Garifuna music. Specifically, he is a master of the paranda, a style based around the acoustic guitar that often draws comparisons to the blues for its often bittersweet melodies and sharp social commentary concealed within songs about everyday life. Although not as well known as Cuban son or Colombian cumbia, it is without doubt one of the continent's great music traditions; a style deeply African and Latin American at once.