Today the Garifuna Collectives returned to Belize after a 2 week tour in Europe. The band played in 6 cities including London England, Warsaw Poland, Prague Czech Republic, Brussells Belgium, Utrech Netherlands and Bern Switzerland. It's the first time any Belizean band has played those faraway places and today they stopped by our studios to share with us their firsthand experienced.
Joshua Arana - Drummer, Garifuna Collective
"The whole tour; if you break diwn the tour in sections, you are either sleeping, you're on stage, you are eating or you are 
travelling. that's the tour."
Desiree Diego - Vocalist, Garifuna Collective
"We are always on the road. Sometimes when we do try and catch up with even with ourselves it's kind of hard for us. The motive is that we are here and we are here to do the work and that's what we are here for. At the end of the day when the tour finish like now it's then that we get tired."
Al Ovando
"The work; we grow and we are the ones here now but we should let everybody know that we do the work ourselves. We have agents and we have people who we ask to be part of the team and so they do all the preparation before each city, before each venue. We have a road manager from Mexico, we have the label Stone Tree Records, we have Cumbancha Records - it's a big team - it's a lot of people to get this work done in terms of logistics; flying, getting on the trains, buying the tickets, make sure every is up and on time."
"The timing was different. When we were on the stage - coming off the stage everybody was asleep and it was hard to get back and bring that feedback. We wanted to call everybody in Belize - the whole logistics and timing was really hard for us in terms of trying to get any feedback to Belize. We use Facebook and we ask everybody to log on to Facebook and check out the group - follow us and we continue from there."
Sam Harris - Guitar
"I want to say thanks to the Good Lord, we went, do what we had to do and got back safe. Thanks to the Belizeans that we met. It was amazing that throughout the European countries we met Belizeans and their hospitality was par excellence. Thank them so much and thanks to everybody."
Al Ovando
"The competition is huge and we are just fortunate that Belize has music and original music that is even unheard of and that's our purpose and the purpose of this whole Garifuna Collective band is to push this and set the road and standard for everybody coming behind to follow a trend and how to move ahead."
Joshua Arana - Drummer, Garifuna Collective
"For us the mission continues. The Andy Palacio dream continues, teaching about Garifuna music, dance, the culture to tye world, taking the name of Belize out there and to try to get our very own to embrace what it is that we have because what it is that we have - just before we came off the plane, a Belizean step into the plane welcome everybody to Belize and she said its mother nature's best kept secret - everything we have we should embrace it as it is mother nature's best kept secret, but that has to start from us."
You can view pictures of the tour on the band's official facebook page.
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