MIAB offers young artists free studio time
As any budding artist will tell you, one of the hardest things about breaking into the music industry is getting that “hit” song recorded in a professional studio. But for the past two days, young Belizeans have been belting out their lyrics thanks to the efforts of the Music Industry Association of Belize. News Five’s Karla Vernon reports.
Karla Vernon
As part of Music Week celebrations, the Music Industry Association of Belize, MIAB offered free music recordings to aspiring artists. With two studios available, one mobile and another inside the centre, in two days technicians had recorded more than twenty tracks. According to MIAB president Ivan Duran, the response highlights Belize?s vibrant music industry.
Ivan Duran, President, MIAB
?The response has been great and I think is has provided a very good opportunity to young musicians to just get that first encounter with a recording studio and see how the people work.?
?We were hoping for more musicians to come in, but I would say like eighty percent of the participants have been singers, so they will come with a song in mind and we have probably made an arrangement here for them to play, put the background music to it. Others have come with a CD with pre-recorded music and they just added the voice. I think Friday we have some students coming in actual instruments, I think we?re thinking of recording a steel band, a cello, so maybe we?ll have some of that.?
Each artist or group received a copy of their recording for their own use or for promotional purposes.
Sherilee McKenzie and Royanne Riverol want to use their voices to reach out to other teens on the issue of HIV/Aids.
Girls Singing
?AIDS is taking over the world, use protection boys and girls, listen to what your people say, can you live with having aids for the rest, for the rest of your days. Yo, this is Sherilee, aka, Baby G, listen to mi chat pon di M-I-C, it no matter if yuh twenty or yuh sixty, AIDS deh ya,?
Sherilee McKenzie, Singer
?The song is entitled ?AIDS? it was written by me and she is my backup singer. This is out first time recording together at a studio, so when we saw the ad out that they were giving free recordings, our teacher told us about it. So we just came over recorded. It went well, it was a nice experience.?
Royanne Riverol, Singer
?We are trying to enforce it more and let others know the impacts of AIDS and what the song is trying to put forward to others, so it?s really, it?s a nice song.?
Ivan Duran
?I am sure from the artists that are have passed through the studios this week, and I am sure several of them will pursue at some point a music career. With MIAB what we are trying to do is just encourage everybody to pursue their dreams and if it takes a few years then so be it.?
McKenzie
?We are just trying to get exposed at first then think about the money later.?
Reporting for News Five, I am Karla Vernon.
Music Week ends on Friday night with a concert at the Bliss featuring the Guatemalan entertainers Armando Pineda y de Hasta Atras, Son y Tangeo of Mexico, and Belize Bruk Grong, a group of fifteen master musicians under the direction of Bredda David Obi. Tickets are fifteen and ten dollars and the show begins at eight p.m.
