Letters from readers and Belizean music

Joe,

I am constantly amazed at the level of discourse on your web site. I say, Joe, if you ever throw a party and invite all your letter writers, I wanna come. I do wonder if you get tons of email and print, like, one out every 50? Do you correct spelling? Is lovely Lisa from LA an anomaly? Do you get many letters from people who have read Deer Hunting with Jesus hoping it was a book about hunting and/or Jesus? -- which it sorta kinda is, but not in THAT way.

I feel a little guilty taking up your time with such a nonintellectual letter. Maybe you could write about your letter writers. Maybe you already have.

Nora
Amazed and grateful in Vermont

P.S. I recently caught The Garifuna Collective's tribute concert for Andy Palacio. Jacob of Cumbancha Records (here in Vermont!) talked through tears about Andy and Belize. A beautiful, sad moment. The concert was breathtaking, although for me, nobody else can sing Andy's songs without making me mourn. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

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Well Nora,

I too am amazed at the level of discourse in the emails I receive. And I am very fortunate that often the people who write to me stop in and visit when I am in the States.

As to the Garifuna Collective, wonderful, isn't it? Andy Palacio was the Garifuna's Bob Marley. It's such a small country that we all knew Andy. He rode the rural buses like everyone else, and was a friend to all. Yet he was very ambitious without being offensive. Anyway, I'll never forget the crying people who lined the roadside to see the passing of his casket on the way to the plane to Barranco. We have no equivalent of such a sincere outpouring in America, mostly because we have no equivalent of the poverty and longing for a national identity in the world. Though it did resemble the haunting sense of loss of Kennedy assassination a bit.

As you may or may not know, the Garifuna are the most looked down upon minority in Belize (7% of the population). And so to have a world figure such as Andy emerge from among them had tremendous emotional impact. Not only on just the Garifuna, but all of Belize -- especially after the Marion Jones performance enhancing drug debacle and her loss of the Olympic gold medals and conviction of check fraud and drug use. Jones, a Belizean Creole born in America, was that small nation's pride, and they even named a stadium after her. The Creoles have traditionally been the dominant class in Belize, and they saw the Garifuna as sort of hick savages out in the coastal boonies. Andy helped change all that. Now Andy's "Watina" is pretty much the Belizean national anthem.

In art and labor,

Joe

P.S. For those readers who may not know of Andy Palacio, he died last January at the age of 47. With admiration and great respect for Andy, and just for fun, here is a tribute to Andy Palacio on YouTube.