So­ca, dance­hall and hip-hop mu­sic are said to be in­flu­enc­ing youths in­to crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.This is ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the Ryan Com­mit­tee on Youth at Risk. The re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Fri­day.The com­mit­tee's re­port said while it was im­pos­si­ble to draw a de­fin­i­tive cor­re­la­tion be­tween vi­o­lence or ex­plic­it­ness of lyrics and the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty among youth, the lyrics of 2012 so­ca hits "tend to sup­port the idea of a con­tem­po­rary youth cul­ture that is very con­sis­tent with the re­bel­lious be­hav­iour of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of youth."

It added "There is lit­tle doubt that Amer­i­can (hip-hop) and dance­hall mu­sic have been hav­ing their im­pact on Trinidad's young black males."The re­port said a sur­vey of 50 stu­dents in two schools re­vealed that 81 per cent of the stu­dents pre­ferred dance­hall and hip-hop mu­sic.The au­thor of the sur­vey, Marc Jack­man, be­lieves the sta­tis­tics "con­firm the pow­er­ful ef­fects of dance­hall and hip hop mu­sic on per­cep­tions of sex­u­al­i­ty and an as­so­ci­a­tion of vi­o­lent be­hav­iour in Trinidad."The 436-page re­port said there was a need to ex­am­ine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the cur­rent mu­si­cal cul­ture of youth and its re­la­tion­ship to vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty. It al­so point­ed out that the al­co­hol or rum themes in chut­ney songs in the past decade had "been seen as re­spon­si­ble for the per­pet­u­a­tion of crime in the so­ci­ety, more so, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in the In­di­an home and com­mu­ni­ty."

In its rec­om­men­da­tions the Ryan Com­mit­tee said the me­dia should be­come a ma­jor part­ner in a "mu­sic for change" cam­paign, adding that the me­dia have a cru­cial role to play as an in­flu­en­tial in­sti­tu­tion on the young peo­ple. It said the me­dia should be in­vit­ed to pro­vide sug­ges­tions and in­ter­ven­tions.An­oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion was that the Pan in School Co-or­di­nat­ing Coun­cil should be en­cour­aged to pur­sue the use of pa­n­yards as ex­ten­sion of schools and com­mu­ni­ty-based cen­tres to learn steel­band mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties.Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas was un­avail­able for com­ment when the T&T Guardian at­tempt­ed to reach him yes­ter­day.

But 50th An­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence Ca­lyp­so Monarch Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don said: "I would agree with the point of dance­hall and hip-hop mu­sic. A lot of the top­ics and ar­eas dealt with in dance­hall and hip-hop speak to the ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women, the val­ue of mon­ey and ma­te­ri­al­ism. Crime is a by-prod­uct of the love of mon­ey so these mu­sic forms tend to in­flu­ence the psy­che of the young peo­ple lis­ten­ing to them– top­ics based on sex, mon­ey, clothes, cars and women."I dis­agree, though, that so­ca mu­sic falls with­in this am­bit as this mu­sic deals pri­mar­i­ly with the fes­ti­val that is Car­ni­val. You may have songs with sex­u­al con­no­ta­tions, but that is what we've al­ways had in ca­lyp­so mu­sic. So, would you say as well that ca­lyp­so of the 60s-80s in­flu­enced crime?

"If one wish­es to find a link be­tween mu­sic and crime, one needs to look at the de­vel­op­ment of the pop­u­lar ur­ban mar­ket, from the ear­ly 90s. The ad­vent of the ur­ban mu­sic caused young peo­ple to be in­flu­enced by hip-hop and rap mu­sic. Youth was al­so ex­posed to, and in­flu­enced by ca­ble tele­vi­sion. It was from there one saw the lack of love and de­pre­ci­a­tion of so­ca and ca­lyp­so mu­sic." Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2011 Du­ane O'Con­nor said: "I wouldn't say ca­lyp­so or so­ca in­flu­ences crim­i­nal be­hav­iour in young peo­ple. Most of the so­ca mu­sic speaks about love and re­la­tion­ships. It is a to­tal­ly out of place, and an er­ro­neous state­ment to link the mes­sage of so­ca mu­sic to that ex­pressed in dance­hall and rap mu­sic, and the mu­sic in­flu­enc­ing crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

"In the old days, peo­ple like Spar­row and Duke would sing spicy ca­lyp­soes, clev­er­ly us­ing dou­ble en­ten­dre. Artistes like Su­perBlue, Machel (Mon­tano), De­stra and Denise Bel­fon have all on­ly sung about love. Look at Su­perBlue this year. His song is a sweet par­ty song that has noth­ing to do with vi­o­lence. For Car­ni­val I watched my son and about 300 chil­dren un­der 11 years old just jump­ing and scream­ing, and en­joy­ing Fan­tas­tic Fri­day. You tell me what part of that is en­cour­ag­ing vi­o­lence.

"Oth­er mu­sic gen­res like rap or hip-hop do in­duce vi­o­lent thoughts and ac­tion, and we def­i­nite­ly don't have none of that in our so­ca mu­sic." –With re­port­ing by Pe­ter Ray Blood