The September celebrations don't start officially until September first, but the unofficial start takes place tomorrow night at the memorial park.
It's the national song competition where Belize's pre-eminent performers intermingled with a few newcomers and juniors have penned songs for the September celebration season.
A total of 22 of them will perform those songs tomorrow in the categories of carnival songs and patriotic songs. But it's not just any sing-song business, this is a serious competition; after all, there's three thousand dollars at stake for the winner.
We met two of the performers today who had on their game faces:....
Tanya Carter
"I will just do my best and be the insane person that I know live inside of me. Well without giving too much all want to do is give more than usually give getting to the whole carnival soca feeling and just go-off, I just have a plan to go-off. I want to do my best, I definitely give my all."
Jules Vasquez
"So it is a competition for you?"
Tanya Carter
"It is a competition nothing more, nothing less and I just plan to make Belize proud and my song name is Belizean pride so that speaks for itself."
Ernestine Carballo
"A whole lot of excitement, a whole lot of energy, a whole lot of raising of the flag and bring your t-shirts out, you bring your water and everything because we will have carnival bands out who will back me up and that is a secret that I can't reveal it yet and also have dancers on stage in costumes and the full works so I have decided to enter the competition to bring back that whole celebration, that whole love for Belize and that whole energy and make everybody feel the love and the appreciation. My song will be call 'on this ya carnival day' and it's for the road, it's all about the road march so I want everybody to bring out your rags, bring your flags, bring yourself and bring everything because this song is for soca and this song is for the road march."
Organiser
"It's not just a contest, it's a competition that allows an artist to showcase what it is that makes them an artist that their craft. This includes not just the musical arrangement but the lyrical content, their audience appeal, how they attract the crowd, how they perform on stage. For the carnival section some of them are allowed to bring dancers on stage, they are allowed to use costumes, for the patriotic they can have background singers, some people have 2-3 background singers and so we are looking at providing a show and the one who provides the best show and has the strongest performance is the one that's going to take the $3,000.00 tomorrow."
Organiser
"So will say our judges definitely have a job cut out for them because we have Tanya and Ernestine, we have Berne, we have instruments of love."
For those who can't make it out to the park at 7:00 tomorrow, the event will be aired live right here on channel 7.
