Brukdown is a genre of Belizean music

Music of Belize

The music of Belize has a mix of Kriol, Mestizo, Garifuna, and Maya influences. After many centuries of Maya habitation, British colonizers arrived in the area in the 17th century. Belize was Britain's only colony in Spanish-dominated Central America until self-government in 1964 and gaining full...

. Its best-known performer and innovator, Wilfred Peters

Wilfred Peters

Wilfred Peters, MBE was a Belizean accordionist and band leader, known as the "King of Brukdown". He toured Europe and North America with his band, the Boom & Chime Band, and was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in 1997 for his cultural contributions.A Belizean national icon Mr. Peters was one of...

 is regarded as a Belize

Belize

Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...

an national icon. The word brukdown may come from broken down calypso, referring to the similarities between brukdown and Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

ian calypso music

Calypso music

Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...

; the presence of large numbers of Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

ns in Belize also led to an influence from mento

Mento

Mento is a style of Jamaican folk music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music. It has its roots in calypso and other Jamaican folk music. Mento typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums, and the rhumba box — a large mbira in the...

 music.
Brukdown is a Kriol

Belizean Kriol people

The Belizean Creoles, locally known as Kriols, are Creole descendants of English and Scottish log cutters, as well as Black African slaves brought to Belize. Other small minorities include Creoles and the Miskito from Nicaragua, Jamaicans, and other West Indians who assisted in the logging...

 mixture of European harmonies

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

, African syncopated

Syncopation

In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...

 rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

s and call-and-response

Call and response (music)

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...

 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

Banjo

In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

, guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, dingaling bell, accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

 and a donkey's jaw

Jaw

The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term jaws is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serving to open and close it and is part of the body plan of...

bone played by running a stick up and down the teeth, and also a grater

Grater

A grater is a kitchen utensil used to grate foods into fine pieces. It was invented by François Boullier in the 1540s.-Uses:...

. Brukdown remains a rural, rarely recorded genre.