"The Original Turtle Shell Band (Turtle Shell Music) was recorded in a Belize City radio studio between 1980 and 1982, just as Belize gained its independence from Great Britain. Digitally remastered in Germany, the recording retains the raw quality of live low-tech, projecting the raucous vitality of an emergent music. After jamming at Cayetano's art studio and perfecting their chops at what they called "roadblocks" on the streets of Dangriga, the band took a bus to Belize City and set up in a park to play. When a tropical cloudburst cut short their enthusiastically received impromptu performance, a passing technician invited them to the Belize Radio One studios, which sessions fortuitously captured the group in its genesis. The guitar work shows strong affinity with the strumming string-band style of Belizean Creole "boom-and-chime" music, but the Garifuna percussion lends the music its unique dance sound. My favorite tracks are "Gayu Benafí Leh" (built around a crowing imitation of a rooster) and "Kemon Aduguraha," whose percussive figure, uncooked vocal harmonies, call-and-response interplay and mix of Spanish and Garifuna lyrics illustrate the emergent style at its exuberant best. The Original Turtle Shell Band is a significant historical document, quite distinct from recent (but equally vital) digital recordings of a more polished and cosmopolitan combination of Garifuna and international styles." - Read Michael Stone's article about Pen Cayetano in RootsWorld

About the artists
Uwala, Uwala, Uwala Busiganú
When Pen Cayetano created Punta Rock in 1981, the Turtle Shell Band was founded and a new generation of music started. It is commonly accepted that the modern Punta Rock started with Pen Cayetano, painter and musician from Dangriga, Belize. Pen, as a youth growing up in the heart of Garifuna community, hanging out around Isabel Flores, the late great drum builder and drummer, absorbing the master's skill with the ancient rites of drumming and ancestral worship, he began to realize that the youth of Belize were loosing their cultural foundations It was not an epiphany, but an intuitive grasp of the essential meaning that a people's link to their past represented the best hope for a strong future. He grasped that the isolation the Garifuna had existed in was about to undertake radical change and instinctively knew that the youth needed something new to step with the time.

Pen and his friends including Mohobob, Myme, Faltas, Bernard, Peter, Jeep and Calypso congregated at his Art Studio at 5 Moho Road, going back to their culture, immersing themselves in the spirit. The musical inspiration grew in Pen's mind until the idea of quickening the pace of the traditional punta rhythm was out. Adding the electric guitar and the turtleshells, which Pen discovered as a percussion instrument the Punta Rock took off with the Turtle Shell Band. - Jennifer Ryan, 1993