The country's best marching bands will go head to head tomorrow. It's the second annual Belize Band Fest, which is sponsored by Love FM. It starts at 8 am in front of Gwen Liz High on Elston Kerr Street and sweeps across the city in a virtual symphony of syncopation. The marching bands from primary and high schools across the country have spent months preparing and practicing. Tomorrow they'll test their mettle on the pavement and today we got a preview from organizer Brian Mossiah.
Brian Mossiah,
"The competition will be in two parts. One is that there will be a street parade that will start from 7:30, there will be an assembly at Gwen Lizarraga High where all fourteen, now fifteen bands, including Delille Academy from the Stann Creek District, will be participating. And at assembly we will be sharing the rules and regulations of the parade and there will be an inspection by the Mayor of Belize City, a after which the parade starts at eight o'clock sharp.
The competition will be among fourteen of the all registered bands, Minorettes will not be competing and it will be a field display of the bands performing in their march formation, their baton twirlers - the whole nine yards.
The Governor General's dream is to get young people into music. It is particularly more so those in schools and the problem we had, to generate a program like this, was that they were not playing music in school and so we had to start with what we had, which was just a drum corp. But we are slowly, as a matter of fact there'll be five bands participating this year with wind instruments which is a step forward and we are hoping that this will grow. The dream is that in five or ten years from now, the children on the city streets will he holding an instrument rather than a gun. That's the dream."
Again the march starts at 8 am. The activity moves over to the Marion Jones Stadium at 1 pm. Saint Luke's Methodist is the defending overall champ. The competition will be judged by members of the Southern University Marching Band from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
