Aurelio Martínez Suazo, Champion of Garifuna Music, Dies AT 55

Aurelio Martínez Suazothe Honduran musician who championed his country’s Garifuna people (also known as the Garínagu) and brought the music to wider international attention, has died. Martínez was one of 13 people killed last night (Monday, March 17) in a small plane crash off the coast of the Caribbean island of Roatán, according to The Associated Press. He was 55 years old.

Born in the isolated town of Plaplaya, in Honduras’ Gracias a Dios district, in 1969, Martínez participated in traditional Garifuna rituals from a young age. Typically performed on acoustic guitar with percussive accompaniment, Garifuna songs combine West African rhythms with Latin, reggae, and calypso music. At the age of 14, Martínez moved to the port city La Ceiba, where he began performing in various latin jazz ensembles. Eventually, he formed his first group, Lita Ariran, whose 1995 album, Songs of the Garifunamade them one of the first Garifuna bands distributed on an international label.

Two years later, Martínez met Andy Palacio, a fellow rising star in Garifuna music from Belize, when the two recorded the duet “Lánarime Lamiselu” for Stonetree Records’ compilation Paranda: Africa in Central America. He put out his debut solo album, Garifuna Soulin 2004, and, in 2005, was elected as the first member of African descent in the National Congress of Honduras, where he fought for the rights of the Garifuna community. Following Palacio’s death, in 2008, however, Martínez returned to music, and would go on to release three more studio LPs under the moniker Aurelio: Larru Beyain 2011, Lanternin 2014, and Darandiin 2017. Last year, Lantern was named as one of the best Latin American albums of all time in the The 600 albums in Latin Americaa list project compiled by music journalists from the region.

In 2015, Martínez gave a performace for NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concert” series. “The beautiful thing about Aurelio is that he didn’t want to do things just for himself,” Garifuna activist Ubafu Topsey told The Guardian following Martínez’s death. “He came from such humble beginnings and he never forgot where he came from. He spoke and wrote about the reality of our lives and how to be determined to overcome and to be consistent with how our history.”