International Music Resources by Country: Honduras

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Capital: Tegucigalpa

Official Language: Spanish

Current Population: 9,450,711

Climate:  The climate ranges from temperate in the mountainous regions to tropical in the coastal plains: the mean annual temperature is 24°C (75°F). The rainy season is from May to October.

Area: 112,492 sq km

Religion: Christianity

Citation: Country Profile (Honduras), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 29 September 2021 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/hn.is.1

Amerindians: 

Six indigenous groups have been identified as being separate from the majority mestizo culture; each group has retained elements of indigenous culture to varying degrees. The most recent population figures remain an estimate (1950) of 80,000 semi-acculturated Lenca in four southwestern departments. The bumbum, used in a variety of contexts, is the onomatopoeic name of the long music bow known by mestizos as the caramba. Maracas, bamboo flutes with three and four finger-holes, and drums accompany dance during annual festivities. The bra-tara flutes are used in the sikro funerary ceremony. These are 1 metre long with four holes located towards the distal end to produce a low tone. Another flute, the liban, is a three-holed globular flute made from a crab's claw and bees' wax. A friction drum, translated as llamador del tigre (caller of the jaguar), consists of a large hollow gourd across which goatskin is stretched. Pulling a string made from horse-hair through a small hole in the skin produces a loud sound of low register that is used to flush out wildlife during a hunt.

African-Honduras: 

There have been three migrations of peoples of African descent to what is now Honduras. The first occurred during the early colonial period, when a small number of Africans were taken into the central part of the country. Although this group probably introduced both the marimba and the caramba (musical bow), it later mixed so thoroughly with the dominant mestizo population that it no longer exists as a distinct group. At the end of the 20th century, there were no identifiably African musical stylistic retentions in mestizo music. The Garifuna in Honduras were the first to organize a performing Garifuna folk troupe in the mid-1960s, El Ballet Garífuna. In addition, punta, a song form once part of Garifuna funerary ritual, developed into a new popular music style in the mid-1980s. Although punta is usually sung in Garifuna and includes at least part of the garavón drum ensemble, as it became more widely popular it also integrated a host of non-Garifuna Afro-Caribbean musical influences. 

Mestizos: 

The essential foundation for musical expression among the majority mestizo population has come from Spanish musical culture, dating from European contact, together with the later introduction of other European musical influences.  Two examples of the latter are the fandango Fandango danced to solo guitar without the use of castanets, which had been accepted as a national form by the 1850s, and La lanza, a shortening of La cuadrilla de lanceros, which was popular among the semi-urban middle classes at the beginning of the 1880s and has since become part of the rural campesino (peasant) folkdance repertory. A major instrument of mestizo folk music is the Marimba. The large chromatic marimba was first imported from Guatemala and southern Mexico around the beginning of the 20th century.The caramba or zambumbia, a monocord over 2 metres long, is the other major instrument used in mestizo music that is of African origin. The bulk of other folkdance forms and their corresponding musical accompaniments carry the titles of European salon dances that took root throughout the mestizo population during the colonial and early independence period. The most popular  include cuadrilla, danza, contradanza, mazurca, pereke, polka, vals, varsoviana and zapateado. 

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