John Culatto
BONEY M will play for FREE in Gibraltar exactly one month before Christmas Day with his founding band member Maizie Williams.
The hit 70s disco band will be part of the Rock’s Christmas Wonderland festival complete with live music and dancing to mark the switching on of the festive lights down Main Street on November 24-25.
Maizie Williams, who will sing at Casemates on November 25, was one of the original members of the band put together by German singer-songwriter Frank Farian.
Boney M topped the European charts with the hit singles like ‘Rivers of Babylon’, ‘Raputin’ and ‘Painter Man’.
The West German disco band sold 100 million records worldwide in a star-studded run that started in 1975 and ended a decade later.
But this will not be Jamaican-born Maizie Williams’ first visit to Gibraltar.
The singer was on the Rock in 2015 to play their first Christmas special there.
She described to Panorama newspaper how the Rock makes her feel at home because it is not entirely British.
“It’s a wonderful place – I love the people here and every time I come, I have a great time,” she said.
“I like that people speak Spanish and the temperament of the people here which is not at all British but is absolutely wonderful.”
She said on that visit that the ‘strong melodies and easy lyrics that everyone can relate to’ were the reason for the band’s success.
“It wasn’t just for the sake of being on stage to perform and sell records so as to be the number one.
“With our music we have touched many lives of people who have been in very difficult situations.”
Touching tribute
Boney M first triumphed in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany before reaching UK in 1978.
There, they soon became a household name and that generation still get a lift when their songs play on the radio.
“There’s one lady who every time I speak of her, I get goosebumps,” Williams told Panorama.
“She wrote me a letter about how she was disabled in a wheelchair and one day when her husband was at work, she turned on the radio where she heard one of our songs, ‘Born Again’.
“She started singing to it and it touched her so deeply she was out of her wheelchair without realising it so when her husband walked in and saw her walking he couldn’t believe it.”
The event will coincide with the Black Friday weekend which the Minister for Tourism and Culture Christian Santos said could ‘support the local business community’.
More details on the one-off performance during the Festival of Lights at Casemates will be released soon, organisers GCS promised.
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