Encouraged by a songwriter mother with a gorgeous voice and by his widely admired local troubadour father, the young Aurelio made his own guitars from cans and fishing line. Music and songs were the only entertainment in a place with no electricity and little contact with the outside world, and it is these songs that shaped him as an artist and inspired the pieces on Laru Beya.

Aurelio's father was an expert in paranda music, a street-friendly, Latin-inflected style that chronicles everything from social ills to humorous tales to aching love, all in a highly improvisatory and soulful mode. Aurelio has retained this musical flexibility, and in the sessions that became Laru Beya, he revealed his tireless, playful love of making music on the fly - sometimes for hours at a time, lying in a hammock with his guitar, inventing songs late into the night.

At the heart of every song on Laru Beya beats a traditional Garifuna rhythm, and not just the most widely known popularized rhythms of punta ("Ereba") or paranda ("Ineweyu") familiar to fans of Central American music. Aurelio uses the rarely recorded rhythms such as the sacred ugulendu or the African-inflected abeimahani rhythm, usually connected with women's singing. To deepen the sad tale of migration to the U.S, "Tio Sam," for example, Aurelio concluded the song with part of a traditional female song set to the abeimahani beat, sung by a chorus of Garifuna women.

However, beyond the beauties of Garifuna tradition and Aurelio's striking interpretations lie the true guiding force behind the album: the loss of one of the Garifunas' most eloquent and musically talented spokespeople, Andy Palacio. Palacio, who passed away suddenly in 2008, can be credited with transforming the music of the Garifuna from local curiosity to global icon. He won regional popularity as the powerhouse behind punta rock, a Garifuna-rock synthesis that broke onto the Central American scene in the 1990s. In.......
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