Just the other day, I swear, I was talking to a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. She was telling me about her recent trip to Belize and how she went scuba-diving in the reefs. Then she said, “I spent a week with the Garifuna people on the beach. They have such an amazing culture and music that’s so unique.” And right after that she added, “Somebody should be remixing that and bringing it out to the dance-floors.” “I’m sure someone will soon enough,” was my answer.
Well, voilà, here we have it: Garifunasty, the new EP by Indianapolis’ DJ/producer K. Sabroso who we’ve previously introduced to the Remezcla readers as the guy who remixed this song, and the guy who put together this mixtape, both strongly recommended.
On Garifunasty, we find K. Sabroso digging deep into the Afro-Caribbean roots and exploring the little-known music of the Garifuna people, of African decent, who live mainly on the coasts of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. They developed their unique sound in virtual isolation from the surrounding Spanish-speaking neighbors.
As a percussion-based music style that’s almost exclusively played live, there are few recordings of Garifuna music, most of them from the last couple of decades when the sound started to attract a little more foreign interest (specially after the crossover success of Andy Palacio a few years ago). But it hasn’t yet crossed over from the hermetic “world music” niche to the global dancefloors and that’s what K. Sabroso is here to fix.
The EP, to be released next week on Spring Strut Recordings, includes five tracks total, and here we have as exclusive free promotional download one of the remixes of the title-track done by Mike B. I hope this satisfies the wishes of my friend since it certainly satisfies my curiosity for the genre and leaves me eager for more.