A true cultural ambassador

" Have you heard about Belize? Have you heard about these people called Garifuna ? "

Those are the questions that Belizean singer-songwriter Andy Palacio hopes people will start asking their friends once they've finished listening to his latest album, the enchanting "Watina."

"Many people still don't know about the Garifuna presence in the region of Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua and a lot of people still don't know the name Belize," says Palacio of the people and country he represents with his lilting confection of Caribbean and Afro-Latin rhythms.

Palacio has made it his business to spread the word about the Garifuna, a group descended from West African slaves who survived the sinking of their vessels off the coast of St. Vincent and mingled with the native Carib population in the early 17th century. (Hard numbers are scarce because descendants fanned out to Central America and the United States -- including populations in Boston and Los Angeles -- after being driven from St. Vincent in 1796.) In 2004, in addition to his music, he took the position of cultural ambassador for Belize's National Institute of Culture and History .

Luckily, he says with a chuckle, "the institute has given me time off to tour." And tour he will, traveling to Europe, Asia, and the United States , then back to Belize in the next few months. Palacio and the Garifuna Collective play the Museum of Fine Arts on Aug. 1.

It was Palacio's own nautical close call in the early 1980 s that spurred him to explore his Garifuna roots. On a literacy mission to Nicaragua, Palacio's ship ran into bad weather and was forced to drop anchor in a small village where an elder was stunned to hear Palacio greet him in the Garifuna tongue, a mellifluous mesh of Arawak, Carib, French , and possibly ancient West African languages.

Moonlighting from his job as a high school social studies teacher, Palacio became a star of the punta rock movement of the '90 s, which married traditional Garifuna rhythms with modern synthesizers and drum machines for a slick sound that lit up the dance clubs of Central America and the Caribbean. But with the prodding of producer Ivan Duran , owner of the Belizean Stonetree Label, the 46-year-old decided to strip his sound back to its musical and communal roots, employing a coterie of Garifuna musicians young and old to record "Watina" in a small cabin by the beach in Hopkins Village.

"We both knew that at some point we would do this," says Duran. "It's a whole different way of approaching music. It's guitar in hand and composing the songs to tell a story , and some of them about very urgent issues. When you write for the dance floor it's a whole different attitude."

Indeed, punta rock is essentially "party music" says Jacob Edgar, president of the Vermont-based Cumbancha Records and head of A&R for revered world music label Putumayo . But "Watina" offered Palacio a chance, says Edgar, "to celebrate the traditions he came from rather than trying to make them palatable in some way."

Palacio says he was ready to make the shift "from the physical to the spiritual, from the body to the soul."

While still danceable, the songs have a handmade feel. Percussion and vocals are group efforts, with mini-riots of clave , maracas , guiros , and even tabletop pounding breaking out. Tasteful acoustic and electric guitar lines underscore tales about peace, family, faith, and tradition. In the humorous but still poignant "Beiba (Go Away)," a wife reads her hard-partying husband the riot act.

"Lyrics are only now beginning to actually be 'written', " says Palacio, who, along with Duran, is calling from a tour stop in Mexico. "There have been composers from as far back as we can trace Garifuna culture, but songs have been handed down as a part of oral tradition. They've been used as communication tools. In fact, songs in Garifuna culture are generally referred to as images."

Those images were once feared to be on the verge of extinction, leading UNESCO to proclaim in 2001 Garifuna culture a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity."

While he was once fearful, Palacio now feels confident that the message is being received.

"The fact that we have been able to generate international attention has come back to have our people react in such a way as to realize 'You know what? Perhaps we are indeed a special people,' " he said.