Garifuna

Nagut’s Story: Songs of Our Mothers is the story of Nagut, which means ‘My Grandmother’, and what she did to preserve her language, Garifuna.  This is an Arawakan language previously spoken in St. Vincent but now only spoken in Belize and other parts of Central America.  Nagut, whose real name is Marcelina Beata Lambey, composed hymns in the Garifuna language which she introduced to the Roman Catholic Church of the 1970s in which Latin had previously been used.  The narrator, Enita Barrett, née Lambey, is Nagut’s granddaughter, and one of the numerous grandchildren she taught her compositions to.  This video is eight and a half minutes (8:30) long.

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