Latin Combo Promises Treat from Yore at B.I.M.F.F. 2024

While its members have been individually playing music for decades, the Latin combo that will play your favourite musical Latin hits in San Pedro this weekend have only been playing together for a few days. They will be the main feature for Belize on Latino Night at the 2024 Belize International Music and Food Festival. The two-day show festival will take place at the Saca Chispas Field, and to ensure that their sound is on point, the group has been rehearsing at the Artist Development Centre on King Street in Belize City. Today, the media showed up for day two to listen in and to talk with the band members and those who put it together. News Five’s Marion Ali serves you this week’s edition of Kolcha Tuesday in this report on the Latin Combo.

 

Marion Ali, Reporting

The Belize International Music and Food Festival is an international show that aims to help sell the Belize tourism product internationally, and on occasions like these, it gives people like our musicians another chance to shine on that level among invited international artists in the hopes of making it big at some other international stage. Sunday, the Latin Combo takes the stage.

 

Josue Carballo, Director, Industry Development, B.T.B

“Sunday, we’re starting off early from 3 to 12, and we’ll be having Punta Rock Legends and the Latin Explosion Combo both on that night. They will actually be entertaining us and we hope know that is all our hope that these combos and then eventually use the Music fest as a platform to then showcase to the world and who knows they’ll be invited in other places as a time goes by.”

 

 

The B.T.B.’s Director of Industry Development, Josue Carballo, says the band will be the prelude to the main event on Sunday night. These are the three vocalists who plan to wow you with their singing talents. What they and their band members describe as work was today literally music to our ears.

 

 

 

Philbert Leslie, Vocalist

“We work hard to blend and get the music going together, but yeah, it’s going well.”

 

 

 

 

Bernadette Gilharry, Vocalist

“I just feel excited and I’m proud of being part of the group.”

 

 

 

 

 

Roman Canul, Vocalist

“I started from when I was much younger and right now we’re taking it back into the music again.”

 

 

 

 

For more mature folks, these tunes are gems, but they are also tunes that most youths are not familiar with because they have been shelved and replaced with modern genres.

 

Philbert Leslie

“Bringing back music first that has played so many years when they placed it on the table, it was like, a lot of youths haven’t heard it ever. And I think it would be wonderful to let them know the music that was played before and enjoy what the elderly people used to play. They can look out for one of my singles in Mi Barrio. They can look for Miss Bernadette, one of her singles as well.”

 

 

Marion Ali

“Which is?”

 

Bernadette Gilharry

“Vete, vete.”

 

Philbert Leslie

“And the music from the Professionals that was given to us to rehearse and show the public and the world the kind of music we’re portraying and showing now.”

 

The whole show will come together through the efforts of people like Al Obando, a seasoned musician who has attended music festivals the world over. We asked him how they get their individual sounds to blend into that one harmonic tune that fans love.

 

Al Obando, Organizer, Belize Music Project

“This group is made up of members of five different groups. One love band, Mr. Watson group.  Lucio and his original generation. And who else? Gilharry, Miss Bernadette, and Mr. Evan, one of the elders from the Gilharry 7 band. He’s been there from 1973, 74, one of them. Each combo has a leader. The leader of the Punta Rock Legends group is Chico Ramos. Carlos, Carlitos, I call him, is the curator for this group. You have Denmark Flores with the Paranda Soul group. And you have James, it’s a James Sanker for the Bruk Dong Roots Combo.”

 

The songs were carefully selected based on their popularity back in the day, and Al Obando says they hope to take you back to memory lane if you were around then, or delight your soul, if you weren’t here when these songs made the music charts.

 

Al Obando

“Many of us, all of us actually are happy to be playing these songs. We have never been played before. Like I asked the question, right? How come bands never play these songs from the professional harmonies? What happened? And so when you actually start playing it, we see all the challenges and then we say, man, those guys must have been like sick musicians that where they come from, because even for us to play it and the love back there, he have so many hours playing the saxophone, but you give him a challenge and then everything turned to reality, right, like it’s a serious stuff.”

 

Reporting for News Five, I’m Marion Ali.