When Quin­cy Joseph walks through the streets of Point Fortin, it is ob­vi­ous that he is a well-known and well-re­spect­ed mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty. Both young and old re­gard him with a sense of ca­ma­raderie, which would give cre­dence to the words of a clas­sic Dance­hall oldie in­struct­ing peo­ple to "live good, in­na yuh neigh­bour­hood." Joseph, 33, bet­ter known in the lo­cal reg­gae cir­cles as Ten Com­mand­mentz, places a lot of em­pha­sis on liv­ing in har­mo­ny with peo­ple, be­cause in to­day's so­ci­ety, the im­por­tance of life is great­ly un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, some­times with fa­tal con­se­quences. Be­neath the po­lite dis­po­si­tion and elu­sive smile, Joseph knows and has ex­pe­ri­enced life in a way which can cause a young man to be rushed to the hos­pi­tal, or low­ered six feet in­to a grave.

Chang­ing course

This how­ev­er, is a way of life from which he has long walked away, and he now has dif­fer­ent goals and a dif­fer­ent out­look on how he should spend his days. In his opin­ion, the youths of the na­tion hold the keys to the fu­ture, and he in­sists that the next gen­er­a­tion needs to get its act to­geth­er. Joseph, who is a song­writer, has penned his lat­est com­po­si­tion en­ti­tled Through D Worst, which is his way of try­ing to soft­en even the hard­est heart, and broad­cast the fact that God can solve all prob­lems. The name Ten Com­mand­mentz was giv­en to him by his Ja­maican friend, who, af­ter lis­ten­ing to his mu­sic, be­lieved that he was try­ing to bring back or­der to the mu­sic in­dus­try. His lyrics ad­dress the is­sues of slan­der, street life, guns, drugs, po­lice bru­tal­i­ty, obeah, and oth­er types of in­jus­tice, all of which he said had been as­pects of his life.

Mod­est role mod­el

While he ac­knowl­edged that his pop­u­lar­i­ty has made him a role mod­el for his peers, Joseph, who is in­dif­fer­ent to that fact, stressed that the youths should be care­ful about what they choose to em­u­late. "As long as I have known my­self, I have been a role mod­el both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. "I am not try­ing to be one (a role mod­el) but I un­der­stand that I am, and as such I try to be mind­ful of the things I say and do. "Once I'm do­ing what I be­lieve in my heart to be right, I don't wor­ry about of­fend­ing any­one."