Aurelio Martínez, ambassador of Garifuna music, has died : NPR

Honduran folks musician Aurelio Martínez has died. The 55-year-old was a revered proponent of the Central American tradition generally known as Garifuna. In accordance with his spokesperson, Martinez and 11 different individuals died Monday in an airplane crash, shortly after taking off from the Honduran island of Roatán.

Martínez grew up in a distant space of northern Honduras. He moved to the provincial capital of La Ceiba to check music, and ultimately launched his performing profession alongside the Belizean musician Andy Palacio. Garifuna, the musical custom by which they labored, is a mixture of West African, Indigenous and different cultures and dates again to the seventeenth century, alongside the Caribbean coast of Central America.

In 2005, Martínez took a break from music to develop into the primary Afro-Honduran elected to the nation’s nationwide congress. Nonetheless, in 2008, after Palacio’s sudden passing at age 48, the artist determined to renew his musical profession full time. His return to music included worldwide excursions, songwriting workshops for Garifuna youth and even an look on NPR’s Tiny Desk live performance collection in 2015.