Art & Music
Art
Tourism to Guatemala has created a thriving industry for traditional handicrafts including basketry, woodcarving, and most notably weaving. Handmade textiles and embroideries are immensely popular among visitors, in no small part due to the fact that many Mayan women continue to wear these traditional clothes. The huipil, a long, sleeveless garment, is intricately woven with human and animal shapes in a style that is distinct to the village where it was made. These and other types of traditional clothing can take weeks or months to weave. Across the countryside, you can see woman weaving brightly colored clothing with traditional looms in front of their homes. Visitors can find these intricate embroideries for sale across the country in open-air markets. Vendors at these markets also sell woodcarvings, especially wooden musical instruments and ceremonial masks. Paintings, handmade jewelry, and other pieces of arts and handicrafts are also popular.
In Livingston and other parts of Izabal, traditional Garifuna crafts can be purchased. These include models of musical instruments such as tambores, or traditional drums made from wood and animal skin, and sisera, which are shakers are made from the dried fruit of the gourd tree, filled with seeds, then fitted with hardwood handles. Jewelry and other small carvings made from coconuts are also commonly found throughout Izabal and are specific to the region.
Tourists should be aware that many products made from endangered species and animals will be available for sale, and should try to avoid purchasing any of these handicrafts. Common items for sale include giant dried Starfish, turtle shells, and large conch shells. Not buying these types of products encourages local artisans to create products using recycled materials and also helps protect these species for future generations.
Music:
Punta
As a population that was never enslaved, the culturally hybrid, multilingual Garífuna maintained palpable West African elements in their music, which builds on a three-drum ensemble resonant with African percussive traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Garífuna singing and drumming entails a fiercely percussive, communal call-and response formulation rooted in the sacred context of ancestral invocations and spirit possession, as in Cuban santería, Haitian vodoun and Brazilian candomblé. The most salient Garífuna secular traditional genres are paranda and punta. Spanish for "carousal," paranda adds an acoustic guitar to the Garífuna drum tradition; the punta couple dance (named for its characteristic rhythm) recalls the pelvic thrust or vacunao of the Cuban guaguancó rumba form.
In the early 1980s, punta rock, a creation commonly attributed to Belizean Garífuna musician, composer and artist Delvin "Pen" Cayaetano, added the amplified guitar to the Garífuna rhythm ensemble. Punta rock's upbeat message of cultural awareness and mutual respect has spilled over into the rest of Caribbean Central America. Among an ethnically diverse Belizean population it also has fostered an expansive sense of national identity both at home and abroad, and has brought belated recognition of the minority Garífuna population's contributions to Belize's cultural distinctiveness in the region.
The Garífuna garaón drum ensemble comprises the lead primera or heart drum, the counter-rhythmic segunda or shadow drum, and the steady bass-line tercera. An unusual adaptation is the snares, one or two guitar strings or wires stretched over the drumhead to achieve the buzzing sound also favored in some West African music cultures. This lends a highly valued denseness to the overall sound, which may deceive the ear as an artifact of electronic distortion in the recording process. Additional traditional instruments include turtle-shell percussion, bottle percussion, claves and a variety of shakers and scrapers drawn from the Amerindian music of St. Vincent. Garífuna musicians have expanded their instrumental array with European additions, while also incorporating English, Jamaican, Haitian and Latin American folk elements, along with reggae, C&W, R&B and rock gleaned from radio broadcasts.
Prominent Garífuna artists include Junie Aranda, Jursino Cayetano, Lugua Centeno, Paul Nabor, Pen Cayetano, Mohobub Flores, Peter "Titiman" Flores, Dale Guzman, Adrian Martínez, Andy Palacio and Gabaga Williams (Belize); Cuadro de Danzas Garífuna Baruda, the Farm Boys, Fuerza Garífuna, Grupo Lanigi Mua, Lita Ariran and Aurelio Martínez (Honduras); and Sofia Blanco, the Garífuna Boys, Suamen and Ugandani (Guatemala). —Michael Stone, National Geographic
Marimba
Marimba is considered the national instrument of Guatemala, and is commonly played by the Q’eqchi people in Izabal. It is used in religious ceremonies and social events. The instrument is an idiophone that is sounded by striking rosewood bars laid over brass resonating tubes. Ironically, it is Southeast Asian or African in origin, and was brought to South America in 16th century by slaves before migrating into Latin America.
