The Garifuna honor a piece of their soul

Celebrities die every day and pop culture quickly moves on. But for the Garifuna people, descendants of shipwrecked slaves whose culture extends through Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, world-music sensation Andy Palacio was more than a star. The Belize native, who suffered a fatal heart attack and stroke at the age of 47 in January, was the soul of a culture that many feared had been close to extinction before he committed himself to its rescue and renewal.

Palacio will be the subject of a special musical tribute today at California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, with members of the Garifuna Collective paying homage to his talent as part of the free Grand Performances series.

"We're very curious ourselves, honestly, to see what effect [Palacio's death] will have on the group," said Dean Porter of Grand Performances. "Although they may not have the, quote-unquote, star quality that Andy had, we know they bring the same authenticity that the audience comes here to engage with."

Some of the musicians played with Palacio at the venue last year. But this time, the headliners will be three women singers -- Sofia Blanco, her daughter Silvia and Desere Diego -- who are featured on a new album, "Umalali: The Garifuna Women's Project," released domestically on the Cumbancha label.

That collection is the result of a decade of fieldwork. Since 1997, producer Ivan Duran has devoted himself to the Garifuna Women's Project, a systematic effort to search out the strong female voices of this culture. Like a musical anthropologist, he visited remote villages to record women in their kitchens and temples, accumulating enough material for an album and a tour, originally scheduled with Palacio this year.

"You could feel among the women a renewed level of dedication and a sense of urgency after his death," said Duran in Spanish this week from his home in Belize. "We all felt that we had to do everything possible so that this door that Andy opened for us would not close on us again."

The women are the real stars of Garifuna culture, forged through the intermarriage of former African slaves and the indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians. The men like the spotlight, said Duran, but the women are the cultural anchors.

"Garifuna women are very strong," he said. "Traditionally, the men are fishermen and the women are in charge of cultivating the fields, as well as raising the children. They are also the ones responsible for transmitting many aspects of the culture. They have a very distinct timbre to their voices and they bring a whole different sensibility to the music."