Steve Hochman on August 11th, 2015

2

Aurelio Martinez — simply known as Aurelio to his fans — will have a decision to make when he steps on stage at the Skirball Cultural Center on Thursday as part of its outdoor Summer Sunset Concerts series.

What kind of performance to give?

If he sees a lot of faces from Guatemala, Belize and his home, Honduras, particularly from his African-rooted Garifuna community, then it’s pretty easy. They know his songs, know the meaning of the words (many in the Garifuna language) and the rump-shaking rhythms (centered on the beats of the traditional Garifuna drum), often given very modern spins as on his bracing 2014 album “Landini.”

“The Garifuna people are singing my songs,” he says of those kind of shows. “They respond when I sing.”

Understandably. Martinez, 39, has become perhaps the most visible champion of the Garifuna, a culture that traces its origins to the survivors of a 17th century wreck of a slave ship on St. Vincent Island, the descendants then being moved to Central America by the colonizing British. Generations since have been subjected to marginal-at-best status in their various countries, often suffering in horrible oppression. The Garifuna language and arts was declared a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

||| Stream: “Sañanaru”

Martinez was mentored by Andy Palacio, who is credited with reviving, if not outright saving, the culture’s music. Martinez stepped in to lead the movement, going so far as running successfully for a spot in the Honduran National Congress in 2005 — one of the first of African descent ever elected to that body.

After Palacio died in 2008, at just 48, Martinez refocused on the power of the music and language to inspire both on a local and global level. (This writer first met and saw Martinez perform five summers ago at a music festival in the western Norwegian fjords spotlighting stateless and endangered people, with Kurds, Sami and Roma people among the others represented.)

And if there are not many Garifuna in the audience on Thursday?

“I have to teach the people pieces of my songs to sing with me,” he says, as he did recently during a concert in England. “There were 10,000 people singing in our language, or trying to. It was a special time.”

Best, though, is when an audience includes both.

“When you have a special mixed crowd, it’s beautiful.”

That is what we can likely expect at the Skirball.

“We have a lot of Garifuna people in Los Angeles, from Honduras, Guatemala, Belize,” he says. “Belize is big in L.A.”

Word from that community is that there is buzz about the show, so there should be a nice turnout alongside the folk and world music fans who regularly attend the variety of Skirball events. Many of the latter are generally inclined to dance, with the Skirball encouraging that in the open area in front of the stage. That heartens Martinez, whose last L.A. show was at a locale that did not have a lot of space for dancing.

“If I don’t see people dancing, I don’t feel good,” he says, laughing heartily, as he does often in this conversation.

With the music on “Landini,” released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, Martinez made sure that pretty much everyone at his shows would be dancing. As he has through his career, he’s expanded the vocabulary with influences from around the region via album producer Ivan Duran, a Belizean star in his own right, the stinging electric guitar of Guayo Cedeño reminiscent of Cuban icon Manuel Galbán and doses of Afro-Caribbean rhumba and the Afropop he studied in Senegal with Youssou N’Dour, one of the leading innovators in world music.

More than ever, though, the core of the album is in Garifuna traditions, particularly the style known as paranda, which features guitar sounds derived from the region’s long Spanish presence. The album title means “landing,” as in the place where people arrived. And the music as a whole is inspired and tied to Martinez’s childhood in the small fishing village of Plaplaya. The songs portray life there both funny and sad — the comical “Nari Golu (My Golden Tooth)” contrasts and complements “Sañanaru (I Can’t Handle Her)” about domestic tension. And “Litun Weyu (Sad Day),” written by young composer Shelton Petillo, is in the voice of a young man in a hospital, forgotten by his family and friends.

So the music, whatever he does with it, is a vehicle for the culture, or his message, for his global outreach for his endangered people. It’s a lot of responsibility — a notion that when raised elicits some hearty laughter from him.

“Somebody has to do it,” he says, still laughing. “I’m just one. We have a lot of people around the world. A lot of people doing different things. I love to do that. It’s simple to do music for me. When I was 8 years old I played Garifuna drum very well. Just to play the drum is easy for me. Music is easy. We have to use music to do other things.”

Of course, if all you do is dance and sing, that’s plenty too. Anyone taking part furthers the cause.

“You are one more of our nation,” he says. “When you do work around this issue, you do a lot to help the Garifuna nation, you are part of our nation.”

||| Live: Aurelio performs at the Skirball Center at 8 p.m. Thursday. The concert is free; parking is $10.

||| Watch: Aurelio’s performance for NPR below: