Belizean Icon Andy Palacio died in January of 2008 but his legacy lives on through music, culture and the sense of pride for his accomplishments that all Belizeans share in. Today he would have been 49 and in to keep his legacy alive, for the second straight year – the Andy Palacio Foundation held a special event to commemorate his memory. It’s called the Andy Palacio Lecture and Yasser Musa presented the first one ever. Now, seeing Yasser Musa back in the Bliss Center made it seem like 2008 all over again – but Musa who lives next to the river where there was an explosion on Friday night, says his appearance was powered by a bomb blast epiphany.
Yasser Musa, Andy Palacio Foundation
“In the spirit of Andy Palacio I will try to be not too formal although I prepared a formal text, I will give you all a copy when I finish. This text I started a few weeks ago and then Friday night around 10 I was sleeping when a bomb went off outside my window. A boat had exploded in the Haulover Creek and I thought my life was ending or something to that effect, I mean I was in a state of dreaming so I wasn’t aware of what was happening and paintings started to drop off the walls and the curtains fell down and smoke, debris from the boat started to come into the house.
So when I woke up in the morning I decided to change the lecture because I was masking some of the ideas that I really wanted to develop and I have to say I am much more courageous now having recovered from my past political after life where I feel more comfortable in being frank rather than masking and saying things that I think people want to hear.
The first thing is why a lecture. I will answer that very simply: Andy Palacio was a an intellectual and I say that in a very heartfelt way because I had many discussions with him. Many people think of artists as just people who produce products, whether paintings or music or drama whatever. But he was this unique type of artist, an intellectual, a guy who could think, who read a lot, who could discuss. And artists today must emulate this behaviour.
The global art world is run by a system that has nothing to do with us. So all those artists who are musicians and want to aspire to get on Billboard charts that might be one in a million. Your role as a social provocateur, your role as a thinker, your role as a teacher in your own society has to be the priority and then you can move on eventually. Again we come back to Andy Palacio. He was a teacher, an ambassador, not just an artist.”
Kami Palacio, Daughter
“A tribute to my father, they did the lecture in his name. That really meant a lot to me on his birthday. What it really means to me is that we are not forgetting him. We trying to carry on with his legacy. It really means a lot to me today.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
“What made the group decide to start these lectures?”
Kami Palacio,
“We have to carry on with his legacy and we don’t want to forget him and we also want to honour him on his birthday and we just wanted to make a lecture on his birthday annual and so we will honour him everyday on his birthday.
He was a Garifuna person but he relates to different culture so we don’t want to say it is just a Garifuna people, he communicates to the Mayan, Spanish, and he communicated to everyone in this country and even people outside of this country.”
As alluded to in the story, the lecture is expected to become an annual event. At the end of this newscast – we’ll have the video for a new song by Aurelio Martinez in memory of his friend Andy Palacio.
