Central American Music

Central American music is a regional umbrella covering the traditional and popular musics of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize. Its shared materials include the marimba orchestras of Guatemala and Nicaragua, the Garifuna drumming and paranda guitar songs of the Caribbean coast, Panamanian tamborito and cumbia, and the nueva canción songwriting that spread through the region during the civil-war years. Spanish colonial forms met Indigenous and West African traditions along both coasts, producing repertoires that travelled with migration across the isthmus. Recorded landmarks range from *Marimba Chapinlandia* to *Andy Palacio* and the *Garifuna Collective*.