November 18, 2008
Dear Editor,
There is something that has been on my mind for quite some time, but there is always a right time for everything. The first thing that triggered me to write this was the article on the 2nd of November issue entitled “Guatemala First” by Colin. I must agree, to an extent that Guatemalan stations should have some sort of limit, as personally speaking, the most I would watch from the said stations are the football games (Guate League) with the occasional Belizean playing. Other than that, I’m cool, get KREM and Channel 7 and any other Belize City channel.
The main reason that I write this is because of an incident that occurred to me some years back (say 2 or 3) when my group released an album. We went about the regularities of going on air on every station presenting our new release. Strangely enough, every radio station played our material regularly except one: KREM. Yes KREM, the exact station we thought we would get the most play from.
So we called the radio station and check what’s up. “The CD got lost’ was the response, so we handed another one down. Still no airplay and same answer again. I found it hard to swallow that KREM didn’t seem interested in playing our music, and more than anything I didn’t understand why. They had a full Belizean Artist program and City artists were certainly getting play.
Now to be completely honest, I very much understand that radios have a status quo in regards to what they play. KREM, for one, is dedicated to playing music in the African Diaspora, mainly hip-hop, reggae, dancehall, soca and in that continuum. My problem comes about when u say Cayo: watch KREM TV, listen to KREM Radio. As an artist, I listen to every radio station I can, but the problem with that, my friends at KREM, is that your content is not geared towards Belizeans in Cayo. Please, someone correct me if I’m wrong, and KREM let’s start with that.
Before we tackle the “Ministry of Broadcasting” (?) let’s start from the ground up. To understand this, let’s analyze the word “content.” Cayo people are really a rice and beans bunch. Cayo is probably the representative (at district level) of this proverbial melting pot. Up north is mostly Mestizo; Belize, mostly Creole; and down south, mainly Garifuna and Maya. Cayo, as you might know, is quite different. Right here it’s a well-balanced mix of all those cultures, thus a unique set of tastes, opinions, and lifestyles. That is how you get people in Benque producing Garifuna Music and Mestizo DJs playing reggae in the club.
Now, let’s tackle the radio listeners. Almost every soul in Cayo listens to radio, and that’s something I’m assuming we share with the rest of the country. The issue comes about when we talk about what we are listening to. Not surprisingly, the content is a huge variety. From Mexican Rancheras to Jamaican Reggae, from American Souls to Cuban Salsa, it’s all heard booming out the neighbour’s window. What I’m getting at, friends, is the fact that as a media house, to cater to the needs of such diverse tastes in music (culture) you must be conscious of the fact that your status quo will need to change. I’m not saying to change completely, neither am I asking to play rancheras, but to start a transition into some of those genres not already included. Did you know that there is reggae, hip-hop and dancehall in Spanish? Yes, in Spanish, and no, not Reggaeton. Maybe you can look into this, that’s the music I grew up loving, and a lot of Cayeños listen to it.
And you might also say, “we play reggaeton.” But to be honest, just reggaeton (at least at a personal level) seems boring, like I’ve mentioned to other people in the industry. As for TV, it’s not picking on Belizean stations that is the issue. We get Channel 5, and we got Belize TEVE among others. They, however, show content that we can enjoy and at least a program or two that is culturally valid to us: I’m 100% positive that the creative minds at KREM can come up with something for us to watch. At the end of the day, media houses in the city looking to expand to the rest of the country need to realize is that they will need to start playing a whole different Diaspora of music and putting some cultural spice into what we watch.
To summarize my overall opinion is to say that I strongly believe that Belize is no longer just Creole or just Mestizo, or just anything. Belize is a symbol of unity right in the heart of Central America/Caribbean and not one aspect of any of our cultures can be brushed aside. One last thing, Colin, it’s not that we people of different cultural background don’t like the 10th and downplay the slaves’ achievement: it’s that it doesn’t have much validity to us, just as Clinton should understand that it wasn’t about whether it was a skirmish, battle or war. It was, and still is, that act of bravery that matters to the modern day Creole. That said, we need to learn to respect another’s opinion, and express our own without causing unnecessary and deliberate offense or assuming that everyone’s should be the same.
“Irresponsible unity causes division.”
Belizeño