Brukdown is a genre of Belizean music. Its most well-known performer and innovator, Wilfred Peters is regarded as a Belizean national icon. Musical genres are categories which contain music which share a certain style or which have certain elements in common. ... Belize is a small country in Central America, and its culture is a mix of Mestizo, Maya, Spanish, British and African influences. ... Belize is a small nation on the eastern coast of Central America, on the Caribbean Sea bordering Mexico to the northwest and Guatemala to the west and south. ...
Brukdown is a creole mixture of European harmonies, African syncopatedrhythms and call-and-response format and lyrical elements from the native peoples of the area. In its modern form, brukdown is rural folk music, associated especially with the logging towns of the Belizean interior. Traditional instruments include the banjo, guitar, drums, dingaling bell, accordion and an ass's jawbone played by running a stick up and down the teeth. Brukdown remains a rural, rarely recorded genre. The term Creole is used with different meanings in different contexts, which can generate confusion. ... This article is about musical harmony. ... In music, syncopation is the stressing of a normally unstressed beat in a bar or the failure to sound a tone on an accented beat. ... Rhythm (Greek ρυθμός = tempo) is the variation of the duration of sounds or other events over time. ... In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. ... The banjo is a string instrument, derived from banjar, an African string instrument. ... The classical guitar typically has 3 nylon and 3 nickel-wound strings. ... For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... a piano accordion An accordion is a small portable free-reed wind instrument with a keyboard, the smallest representative of the organ family. ... For other uses of the word jaws, see jaws (disambiguation). ...
Brukdown music reflects the journey of the African slave into the mahogany camps of Belize.
Brukdown became the music of the people, whether urban or rural.
Peters learned to play the instrument from his father on the family farm near the Sibun River in Belize, where music was the main form of entertainment in his household and when farmers and loggers gathered.
African culture resulted in the creation of brukdown music in interior logging camps, played using banjo, guitar, drums, dingaling bell, accordion and an ass's jawbone played by running a stick up and down the teeth.
Mestizo culture in north and west Belize, and also Guatemala, is dominated by marimba, a xylophone-like instrument descended from an African instrument.
The word brukdown may come from broken down calypso, referring to the similarities between brukdown and Trinidadian calypso music; the presence of large numbers of Jamaicans in Belize also led to an influence from mento music.
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