Cul­tur­al Stud­ies lec­tur­er Dr Kai Bar­ratt says the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing dance­hall artiste Adi­ja Palmer, aka Vy­bz Kar­tel, shows the need by some peo­ple in this coun­try for for­eign val­i­da­tion. This week news broke that Vy­bz Kar­tel would be per­form­ing in this coun­try on Car­ni­val Fri­day, at the height of this coun­try’s cel­e­bra­tions.

The an­nounce­ment was met with strong re­ac­tions on so­cial me­dia, with some say­ing the sea­son be­longed to so­ca and ca­lyp­so mu­sic. Al­ready so­ca artiste Kevon Heath, known as Yankey Boy, em­barked on a hunger strike to protest dance­hall be­ing played dur­ing Car­ni­val.

On Wednes­day, or­gan­is­ers of the con­cert said the show would fea­ture 80 per cent so­ca and 20 per cent oth­er Caribbean mu­sic. They al­so clar­i­fied that a video cir­cu­lat­ing on­line said to be Palmer sign­ing his per­for­mance con­tract for the show was not an of­fi­cial video from them.

But Bar­ratt, a Trinida­di­an who lec­tures at the School of Hu­man­i­ties and So­cial Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Ja­maica, said Vy­bz Kar­tel be­ing in­vit­ed to per­form dur­ing Car­ni­val rais­es some ques­tions.

“I won­der if it’s that we don’t have that con­fi­dence in our­selves. We’ve cre­at­ed some­thing that is mag­nif­i­cent, that is amaz­ing ... a fes­ti­val that de­fines who we are, whether good or bad,” she said. “Putting Kar­tel there, and prob­a­bly that’s a whole oth­er dis­cus­sion to as­sess what does Vy­bz Kar­tel rep­re­sent, and how does that mesh with our own val­ues as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans?”

Bar­ratt said there seems to be a nar­ra­tive that com­mer­cial val­ue is what is im­por­tant. How­ev­er, she dis­agreed and sug­gest­ed that Trinida­di­ans em­brace a form of gate­keep­ing to keep Car­ni­val for “us and by us.”

The up­com­ing show will not be Palmer’s first time per­form­ing in Trinidad dur­ing Car­ni­val. In 2010, he hit the stage at Li­cens­ing Fete draw­ing huge crowds, many of whom had to be turned away at the gate.

The show in­clud­ed per­for­mances from Bun­ji Gar­lin, Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, Ron­nie McIn­tosh, and KMC, who Palmer joined on stage for a per­for­mance of their song We Go­ing Mad.

Palmer has a long his­to­ry of col­lab­o­rat­ing with so­ca artistes, in­clud­ing 2019 Su­per So­ca with Machel Mon­tano and their 2007 song Hold You Tonight. His dance­hall song Bi­cy­cle Wine has a so­ca remix and fea­tures Bun­ji Gar­lin.

Dr Son­jah Stan­ley-Ni­aah, the deputy dean at the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion at UWI, Mona, said there was a sim­i­lar con­ster­na­tion in Ja­maica when Machel Mon­tano was award­ed the keys to the city of Kingston dur­ing the 2023 In­de­pen­dence Gala at Ja­maica’s Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

She not­ed that while dance­hall is wide­ly played in Trinidad, even dur­ing Car­ni­val, if she were a Trinida­di­an, she may have found the Car­ni­val Fri­day con­cert con­cern­ing.

How­ev­er, the Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion via its ad­vo­cate Paige de Leon, who said, “Car­ni­val is about in­clu­siv­i­ty, shar­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion. Those are the val­ues we es­pouse rou­tine­ly as we ply our craft. We op­er­ate in a mar­ket-dri­ven en­vi­ron­ment, and we be­lieve that the stage of the great­est show on earth is big enough for all.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Tourism and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell for com­ment, but he did not re­spond.

Ear­li­er this year he had an­nounced the re­turn of the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion to the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, which is tra­di­tion­al­ly held on Car­ni­val Fri­day mean­ing it would clash with the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val.