And tomorrow night, there will be sweet music as well - but this one will be coming from the Bliss Center.
Master Garifuna song and dance man Aurelio Martinez is in Belize for an Andy Palacio Tribute concert called from La Ceiba to Belize. He will be performing with the with the Garifuna Collective and Paul Nabor - in a show that promises to be hugely entertaining. Arlette Gomez - who is doubling as the promoter - told us more:..
Arlette Gomez
"Tomorrow we have a tribute to Andy Palacio. The show is entitled "From La Ceiba to Belize, A tribute to Andy Palacio." The Garifuna Collective will be performing sounds of Andy. Paul Nabor will be performing sounds of Andy and Aurelio Martinez and his Garifuna Soul Band from Honduras will be here performing Andy's songs and paying tribute to one of our own."
"Aurelio approach Minister Faber about this initiative and Mr. Faber jump on board and says that the best way for us to remember Andy and to carry on is to put his life work on paper and so we commissioned a book on Andy's life. It has been written by Mr. Lawrence Vernon who is a former chief librarian and will be presented tomorrow night at the concert."
"We are asking people to come out and support this event. It is not a commercial event, we will be giving the proceeds to teh Andy Palacio Foundation where they are going to be using some of that to erect a grave site monument for Andy in his home village of Barranco and also we will be giving some of the proceeds to the battle of the drum secretariat who will be furthering paranda music within Belize."
"Paranda music was the genre; they call it the world music now. Before Andy and before the Aurelio's and all of that - Garifuna music did not have a genre. It's now world music. So Andy has put us on the map and we need to pay homage to that. Our mantra throughout the entire planning of this thing was Andy is to Belize and Bob Marley is to Jamaica. We want people to come out and pay homage to him, understand his struggles, what it took over the course of almost 20 years or more for Andy to realize what he did and to get to where he was - a Belizean, UNESCO artist for peace. A Belizean won a WOMEX award - those things are unprecedented. Andy did that for Belize and so that is why we are honoring him."
"Part of it also is that Aurelio believes that we need to carry on his legacy and by carrying it on we need to educate our young people."
The concert starts at 7 tomorrow night at the Bliss Center. Tickets are thirty five dollars.
