The Garifuna Collective with Mosart212 @ SPACE (rain location!)

Vibrant Caribbean soul and rhythm straight from the Garifuna people of Belize— a wholly unique Afro-Indigenous culture descended from survivors of a slave shipwreck off St. Vincent.

Free community concert (!) with this unparalleled 7-piece band that has topped international charts and toured five continents.

The Garifuna Collective is a pan-generational musical group from Belize that has been performing the music of the Garifuna people for more than 20 years. They have performed in over 30 countries across 5 continents. Their critically acclaimed album Wátina was a recipient of the Womex and BBC World Music Awards and voted by Amazon as the “#1 World Music Album of All Time” (besting albums by Bob Marley, Celia Cruz, Ravi Shankar, and others).

The Garifuna are descendants of Afro-indigenous people from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, who were exiled to Central America by the British in the 18th century. Garifuna culture was forged when slave ships carrying captured Africans wrecked off the coast of St Vincent in the 1600s. The survivors swam ashore, mixed with the island’s indigenous Arawak population, and created a unique, resilient culture of free people that resisted European colonial powers for over 100 years. Their defiant culture persists to this day, in communities in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua, where their distinctive language, customs and music are preserved and continue to evolve.

Aban is the new album from The Garifuna Collective, their first release since their critically-acclaimed tribute to activist-musician Andy Palacio in 2014. Aban‘s title translates as “One” in the Garifuna language, and reflects the spirit of unity and self-sufficiency that has kept this Afro-Indigenous people, language and culture alive and fighting in the Caribbean and Central America for over 300 years. Aban brings different traditional rhythms to the forefront – such as Wanaragua and the semi-sacred Hüngü-Hüngü, creatively juxtaposing them with new melodies from the deep well of Garifuna song. The results are fresh and adventurous; proof that The Garifuna Collective is still at the vanguard, bringing the Garifuna’s soulful and vibrant music to the world.

Opening the evening is conductor of the funky symphonies, Portland’s post-modern beat maestro Mosart212. Mo is a pillar of Portland’s electronic music community, from inspiring beat-nights to leading workshops to rocking dancefloors and collaborating across genre and beyond. A true master of original production, head-nodding grooves, crate-dug samples, and globe-trotting rhythms, Mosart212 delivers long-form sets full of far-out beats palatable to the uninitiated.

Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.