Safe and Sound Music for the Future saving lives
Safe and Sound Music for the Future; it was a competition that invited Belizean artists to produce a song that would spread the message of HIV awareness. Over the past few months, forty-three persons submitted songs and the sixteen best were chosen to be released on a sampler CD which is now being distributed for free. The disc was officially launched on Wednesday night and the winners are… coming in second and taking home a two thousand five hundred dollar cash prize is Selvin Castellanos with his song “Taking Ova”. Meanwhile, well known Punta artist Reckless won seven hundred and fifty dollars for the song “Don’t Discriminate” which earned him the third place spot. So who produced the number one song that won three thousand dollars? That would be duo Mixed Vibez, who came to our studios with Safe and Sound coordinator Sebastian Voelker today and you might remember them from our hit show Duets.
Normando Esquiliano, Mixed Vibez
normando esquilliano
“ We didn’t expect it and as usual we do our hundred percent that we always do on every song that we write and up to now I can thank God that we got the top song in the competition.”
Denzel Armstrong, Mixed Vibez
“It feels good to come out on top. Just in a nutshell, it feels good to come out on top.”
Delahnie Bain
What inspired the song that young guys made?
Normando Esquiliano
“We basically try to do the song as catchy and at the same time we try to put good lyrics on it. So we say it’s protection, then prevent and that is the basic message through the song that we do.”
Delahnie Bain
Could you tell us a bit more about what the song is about?
denzel armstrong
Denzel Armstrong
“Well, making the song as commercial as possible and as educational and enjoyable as possible, we made an up tempo beat and we included certain lines, we tried to do it in English and in Creole to let people see that there’s a diverse side in Belize. for example, I said “swine flu kills twenty-six everybody wears mask, AIDS kills two mil where the condoms at?” Just saying that if swine flu could kill twenty-six people, how come two million people dead and lot ah people still noh want wear condoms right? So through that we di show the people that we should raise awareness bout this right.”
Delahnie Bain
The winning songs were selected based on what?
Sebastian Voelker, Safe & Sound Music for the Future
sebastian voelker
“It was a mixture between the lyrics because the lyrics were the most important thing in a song against HIV and AIDs and there was like a total impression of the music and the lyrics working together and somehow personal opinion because our jury members are coming from all over the world so they needed about two weeks to select the songs and we had three categories and that’s the basis of the judgment.”
The CD can be downloaded for free at www.safeandsoundbelize.de or you can pick up a copy at the National AIDS Commission office.
