Guillermo Anderson

Musician and mariner Guillermo Anderson was born in the port town of La Ceiba, where all the Caribbean cultures of Honduras - garifunas, miskitos, mestizos from inland areas, white descendents of buccaneers, Jamaicans and more - converge and mingle.

His parents lulled him to sleep with songs by Mexican composer Agustín Lara, but other elements also shaped his inclination for music: the present of a guitar from his uncle, living a block away from a hall for traditional garifuna dancing and a childhood full of stimuli from seafarers and musicians.

The flow of merchant ships, fishing boats and canoes laden with musical instruments traveling up and down the Honduran coast, playing at fairs, dances and other village celebrations, is fired into his memory. "That was exactly what I wanted to do. It was the perfect combination: musician and mariner. Time and time again I find myself attempting to capture that spirit of the musician and mariner of the Caribbean in my songs."

Guillermo Anderson is an event wherever he plays. The unique personality of his music stems from the mix of garifuna percussion and songs composed by Latin American troubadours, especially the Brazilians.

"I identify with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and the whole generation of singer-composers who are rescuing Afro-Brazilian tradition, and I grew up listening to Garifuna drums."

Anderson is at once Honduras' most cosmopolitan musician and its most Caribbean. The characters in his songs are fishermen, mermaids navigating among the tables of a bar, the people with "coconut skin and little tortoiseshell eyes," the simple farmer who dreams of taking his daughter to show her the sea, and travelers hoping to slip favorite Caribbean dishes through customs so that relatives in the United States can forget the cold for a little while. —Courtesy Calabash Music