There are many things I’ve discovered as a result of my job as the director of a documentary film distribution company (www.der.org) that I would never have known about because they were someone else’s passion, not my own.

One of those discoveries came about when a southern ethnomusicologist, Oliver Greene, brought us a film he had made titled Play, Jankunú Play - The Garifuna Wanaragua Ritual of Belize. Oliver (www.der.org/films/filmmakers/oliver-greene.html) is an assistant professor of Music at Georgia State University who teaches courses in traditional and popular world music from places like Trinidad, Tobago and Brazil. He has a deep knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject, and while his film was very informative, it needed a little tightening, editorially speaking and he was very open to our critique. He took the time and made the effort to craft a better film, which we then agreed to distribute. (www.der.org/films/play-jankunu-play.html)

It was this film and the enthusiastic conversations I had with Oliver Greene over the course of our negotiations, that enticed me into experiencing the world of Garifuna (pronounced ga-RI-foo-nah) music first hand. It was last summer and the word was out that Andy Palacio, the musician who appears in the film and who almost single handedly is credited with saving Garifuna culture and music from extinction, was scheduled to perform with his Garifuna Collective, here at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The summer concerts in the evening in the courtyard at the museum are delightful events, where you can bring a blanket to spread on the grass and sit with family and friends, or reserve one of the tables and enjoy a beer or a glass of wine. As my newly hired Director of Production was also a musician, a drummer, I figured the company would buy a block of tickets to this event and I and my staff would be able to experience Garifuna music first hand. We were also scheduled to meet Andy Palacio and give him DVD copies of Oliver’s film.

The evening was perfect, warm, dry with a gentle breeze. The courtyard was comfortably full, and everyone was in an upbeat mood. The music was fabulous. The kind of infectious music that makes it virtually impossible to sit still, even for a normally sedate museum going crowd. Within a few minutes of Andy’s groups singing and playing, we were all standing and swaying and clapping to the music. The band played up a storm and the energy was electric. I never thought I’d experience an event like this at the MFA. While they played countless encores, at some point it all had to end. There were long lines of people waiting to get autographed copies of Andy’s latest album “Watina” which was acclaimed as the best world music release of 2007.

So it was with great sadness that I read in the obituaries in Monday’s (1/21/08) NYTimes that Andy Palacio, a guy who only months ago had been full of the energy that music gives to life, had died in his native Belize at the age of 47. He died of respiratory failure after a stroke and a heart attack.

But his spirit and talent remains to be experienced through his recordings, and the film Play, Jankunú Play. I am grateful that our company, in some small way (thanks to Oliver Greene), is able to help keep his memory alive.