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Aurelio Martínez, Honduran Musician and Star of Garifuna Music, Dead at 55

Aurelio Martinez, the celebrated Honduran musician who helped bring Garifuna music to the world, has died in a plane crash at the age of 55.

Aurelio Martínez, the celebrated Honduran folk musician who helped introduce the wider world to the music of the Garifuna people, died Monday, March 17, in a small passenger plane crash. The Garifuna people are descendants of Indigenous Caribbean tribes and enslaved Africans, who were exiled from St. Vincent and the Grenadines by British colonizers and settled largely on the coast of Central America. Around the same time, Martínez — who primarily played acoustic guitar — found himself at the forefront of the punta rock movement, a “high-energy, Garifuna roots-infused pop genre” that enjoyed wide success in Central America during the Nineties (per Real World Records).

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