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Image Factory impresario Yasser Musa discussed the importance of the lecture.

Yasser Musa: Director-Image Factory
"We really feel that a lecture is symbolic, yes it's intellectual but still we are trying to figure ways of expanding the space of art and I think the lecture does that because it allows us to reflect, to reason, to recognize why we are doing this. Yes it's under the banner of our great musical ambassador and artist but I think it's really about ourselves as well, how do we carry forward? How do we keep doing things that are innovative, special and important to our society."

"I would like to look at it like this, that we say we have an Andy Palacio legacy but what does this really mean? I always think of the word legacy as a jargon in English. It should have "ing" on it, it should be "legacing" I know that's not a word but it is a process, it's not a product, we always like to put things in boxes, oh Andy is up here on a shelf. No. What we have to recognize is that if we don't know we need to read about it. If we can't understand we need to learn about it and there is so much still yet to learn even about Andy the artist, all his lyrics, the music, the words that he has presented to us, these things have not yet been revealed in total to us yet. So we start from him but we can branch out because I really think that his - the underlying legacy is this continuation, the process of continuing to create."

Dr. Joseph Palacio: Anthropologist
"From the Belize side, the Garifuna people have been among the most influenced by Central America, pulling along a Belize that has always been ambivalent of its Central American identity. The Garifuna who came from Honduras and Guatemala to settle in Belize often went back and forth, forever putting a stamp on themselves as a nation across borders. We have already seen that Andy's exposure in southern Belize was greatly influenced by the neighboring parts of Guatemala and Honduras. We can add that his success in Cancun, Yucatan also helped in pushing him toward taking his rightful place as a global musical icon. In the end Andy P was an artist promoting his Garifuna culture whether it originated from Belize or other parts of Central America. He no longer saw Belize separate from Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. He saw them as all parts of a globalized world. He drew his inspiration, the soul that drove him along, from Central America."

Yasser Musa: Director-Image Factory
"I think he really captured a important part of Andy's life and brought into a bigger picture, the sense of an artist coming from a small village - Barranco and was able to catapult himself into the global community yet still having this duality of remaining true and rooted to who he is and i think that all young people in Belize, especially artists I want to say should read this lecture, we have it online at imagefactorybelize.com. Read this lecture and try to figure for themselves how can they chart a path of yes going out, making quality of our work the number one priority and then reaching back into your own society to inspire, to fill it with a spirit of soul which is what art should be about and I think Andy is a great example of that."

If you'd like to read the entire lecture and see pictures of the event you can find a link to that at 7newsbelize.com (imagefactorybelize.com) And stay tuned right up until the end of our newscast when we'll remember Andy P. with a vintage flashback.