The famous University Singers from the Mona Campus of the University of the West
Indies are in Belize.
They are on a three country tour that took them to Cancun and Chetumal before this.
Now they are back in the Caribbean and today we found them giving workshop to young children. Here's what they were learning:..
Frank Halliburton, University Singers
"In the background we have Mr. Noel Dexter who is our musical director, he has been the musical director for over 35 years actually for the group and he is working for the children teaching them a set of Jamaican folk songs and just setting it to a little choreography. The unique thing about our presentation is that we blend music and movement together. If fact we just came out of a Caribbean tour last year and we found that some of the songs that we have in our repertoire - they seem to be out in presence of some of the other Caribbean islands in tunes but in large part they are pretty much the same that what we have found and what we have found since we have been here is that there is a common threads that seems to
connect Jamaica and Belize. For one certainly our dialect resembles in yours in large part - and certainly we feel quite at home here in Belize."
"Now we have expanded the repertoire to include - certainly we do liturgical anthems, we do American-negro spirituals, we do African music, jazz, Latin - we do a wide range of popular music - reggae calypso, soca - anything you name we sing it. We actually been dubbed universitile singers but the group has grown and we are constantly tweaking our presentation to make it more accessible not only to old fogies but to young people as well."
They still have a few more shows at the Bliss Center…
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