10 years in the making this is a superb selection of songs, singers and informative sleeve notesand should be an essential addition to your music collection.

You may be familiar with the name Ivan Duran and Stonetree Records through the music of the late Andy Palacio. Both worked hard to promote the Garifuna language and culture through music.

Through his work, Stonetree label record boss, Ivan Duran, came to the realisation that women were the keepers of songs and in 1997 he began travelling to Garifuna communities in Guatamala, Honduras and Belize with a DAT tape recorder and microphone in hand. He recorded women singing in temples, kitchens, living rooms. Women who were praise singers, healers, entertainers and mothers and daughters.

In 2002 after five years of research and preparation, Ivan set up a recording studio in a small thatched roof hut resting on stilts and overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean. Here he revisited the field recordings and invited the singers back for a fuller studio session.

This was phase two after which Ivan took the finished recordings back to his Stonetree Studios in Benque Viejo in Western Belize where he continued to work on the music and to and add some subtle effects inviting the Garifuna Music Collective to lay down the bass, guitar and sax parts.

The songs are songs of life, songs of the destruction caused by hurricanes, the anxiety caused by wayward grandchildren, the pain of childbirth, searching for work. Although this sounds somewhat depressing it is common in Garifuna culture to sing laments but with an upbeat celebratory spirit.

The album is packaged with impeccable sleeve notes,in English and Garifuna to accompany photographs of the women who comprise the Garifuna Women's Project. This acts as a documentary not only of the journey making the album but the lives of the women themselves and increases the enjoyment of the music. The result is a beautiful compilation, twelve treasures that will move you in all emotional directions to dance and to empathise.

There's also an extra treat. Wondering about what happened to all the field recordings and tracks that didn't make one of the album's twelve tracks ? There's an enhanced portion to the cd accesible via a computer and Ivan Duran has also stated all the field recordings will be made available to researchers and Garifuna musicians, keeping the traditions alive for future generations.