From mid-June to Saturday August 10th, the Garifuna Collective had a triumphant 25 city tour of north America – probably the most ambitious tour any Belizean band has ever embarked on. These musical ambassadors came home on Sunday after playing in front of tens of thousands of fans at concerts and festivals. 7News greeted them at the airport:..
Joshua Aranda, Drummer
"There's no show that I can pin point and say that 'this is our best show' because the receiption was always great because every show was different and every show was special."
Desiree Diego - Vocalist
"We got the people dancing, we talked to them in Garifuna - I got them talking, saying 'hsietibunu' and you feel that connection with the people, for me it was excellent."
Mohobub Flores - Percussion
"Belizean musicians - we have to do a lot of work to go bold in those big tours like that, you can't go out there shaky. You have to go as a pro representing your country like Belize."
Al Ovando - Bass
"It's like a different - you're in a trance when you're on tour and you go there and get it done and we come back to Belize with a whole different feeling now - totally laid back. You can't ask me to do the same thing again right now."
Sam Harris- Guitar
"Canada on a whole was really nice to us, pretty much when you walk off the stage you felt that the reception was great. It makes you put out a little bit more. To me - the others were saying Edmonton - but I think Calgary was a powerhouse because when I looked it was a smaller crowd but I looked at every individual, old and young doing their own thing, to me Calgary was the one that out did Edmonton."
Joshua Aranda
"The festival in Edmonton - that was where Lloyd had thousands of people just waving their hands and everybody just seemed connected to what we were doing on stage and we felt connected to our crowd also."
Lloyd Enriquez - Vocalist
"The people highly appreciate our music although they don't understand the language of the music, but they appreciate the rhythm and that makes us feel good to be representing Belize on that stage."
Jules Vasquez
"Explain if you can what it was like at the shows in Los Angeles where you all had a larger Belizean audience."
Desiree Diego
"When we got to Los Angeles and the US, people were expecting a different kind of show in Garfiuna, Punta - just a hyper beat in this thing but when we started and we explained to them - from the time we started to sing and the people were watching us and saying 'hey what are you doing' but at the end of the show we know we got to those people just by the music and just the explaining the kind of music we were doing for them. They weren't excited about the Punta anymore -they were more thinking about the Paranda. We also gave them a little bit of Punta, some 'Wanaragua', so we represented."
Joshua Aranda
"Whenever we got the opportunity to talk to anybody about Belize, about Garifuna, that's always a special moment - that was Andy Palacio's mission - to make sure that Belize is known and that the Garifuna culture survives. And that's our mission, to make sure our culture survives, we can't keep the culture here in Belize, that culture needs to spread - it belongs to the people of the world. We want to make sure that the people of the world get the opportunity to enjoy their culture also."
Desiree Diego
"This thing started with Andy, this tour was actually a tribute to bidding him farewell - especially with the CD called 'Ayo' meaning goodbye. We don't want to forget Andy, we don't want to forget anybody who started off this work for us, our hats off to them and we will represent Belize to the very best."
Lloyd Enriquez
"We should continue this work no matter what, we should continue this work to make Belize proud and the Garifuna people proud."
The Collective will launch its new Album Ayo in Belize this week – and then prepare for its next European Tour which starts in late September.
