Language Retention through Music in Two Afrodescendant Communities of Latin America: Garifuna Punta Rock and Palenquero Champeta

Beginning in the 1990s, governments as well as international entities, such as UNESCO, heeded the alarm from scholars and community activists that many of the world’s languages were on the road to extinction. In the context of the Americas, programmes to protect the languages of indigenous and Afrodescendant populations were developed but rarely fully funded. The Garífuna of Central America and the Palenqueros of San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia are two Afrodescendant communities with their own languages that have been declared as Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. In the face of the erosion of their cultures and languages, community members nurtured popular music forms sung in their respective languages in order to increase their linguistic prestige. Garífuna punta rock and paranda as well as Palenquero champeta have endured both condemnation and appropriation by dominant cultures and the global culture market. In the end, however, they have successfully attracted the youth of both communities to their heritage languages, serving as a vehicle to stem language loss.