Umalali is a collaborative project put together by Belizean musician and producer, Ivan Duran.

In the 1790s, they were shipped by British authorities to Roatán Island off the Central American coast, and had soon created settlements in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

[Notes 2] Duran recorded women and the traditional songs in everyday settings: kitchens, in the streets etc... "The project was always about the stories, about the lives of these women, about capturing the essence of their voices and putting them in a modern context.

"[Notes 1] In 2002, five years into the project, Duran constructed a small, thatched roof, studio on the shore of the Caribbean Sea in Belize.

After getting all of the vocal tracks he wanted, Duran returned to his Stonetree Studio in western Belize and began another five-year process of layering instruments and adding effects to make the local music he had captured, speak to a global audience.