Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

A video shared by the or­gan­is­ers of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val show­ing dance­hall artiste Vy­bz Kar­tel (Adid­ja Palmer) sign­ing what seems to be a con­tract to per­form in Trinidad for Car­ni­val Fri­day 2025 has ig­nit­ed a firestorm of de­bate across so­cial me­dia.

Fans and crit­ics alike have been weigh­ing in on what this could mean for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val.

Mean­while, so­ca artiste Kevon “Yankey Boy” Heath has start­ed a hunger strike to protest Vy­bz Kar­tel’s per­for­mance at the con­cert in Trinidad on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day when So­ca Monarch is sched­uled to be held.

Yankey Boy took to his In­sta­gram page to ex­press his dis­gust yes­ter­day.

He ex­plained that while he loved Vy­bz Kar­tel and could not wait to at­tend one of his con­certs, he was not in sup­port of him per­form­ing at a con­cert on Car­ni­val Fri­day night.

He said the is­sue that he has with this move start­ed dur­ing Labour Day in Brook­lyn, New York.

“We Trinida­di­an truck was play­ing dance­hall, fe­males in cos­tume putting up gun fin­ger in the air. That’s not right; that’s not so­ca, that not rep­re­sent­ing for we cul­ture, then I see the same thing hap­pen in Mi­a­mi,” he said.

He sees So­ca Monarch as a plat­form for up­com­ing artistes to show­case their tal­ent and said Vy­bz Kar­tel could have per­formed any oth­er day.

“It have talk up in the air that they want to bring back So­ca Monarch, they go­ing and kill the So­ca Monarch ... The youths who are un­der me and above me who like cul­ture go­ing to see Kar­tel, which mean we not about cul­ture. I re­alise we don’t like cul­ture; we don’t like we peo­ple, that is what hurt me,” he said.

He re­vealed that since the post on his planned hunger strike, one so­ca artiste who reached out to him was against his stance. He added, how­ev­er, that peo­ple have been mes­sag­ing him pri­vate­ly with their sup­port.

The heat­ed dis­cus­sion on Vy­bz Kar­tel’s planned per­for­mance in Trinidad con­tin­ued on so­cial me­dia even as the pro­mot­ers is­sued a state­ment on their Face­book page clar­i­fy­ing that the artiste would be a guest and the event would be 80 per cent so­ca and 20 per cent dance­hall.

So­ca artiste Fayann Lyons-Al­varez, mean­while, wel­comes the Clarks singer, who she said per­formed dur­ing a Li­cens­ing fete in T&T years be­fore his in­car­cer­a­tion. The Road March and In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM) cham­pi­on said they per­form and tour with dance­hall artistes all the time, and they feel like part of their fam­i­ly.

“We, mean­ing my­self and my team, can­not count the amount of times we have been in­clud­ed on reg­gae shows, it’s Jerk fes­ti­vals ... The kind of close­ness that we have with these men and women, it’s very hard for us as artists who un­der­stand what we do when we get on the road, mean­ing every­body just try­ing to get their cul­ture and their coun­try recog­nised and ac­knowl­edged ... it’s kind of hard for us to see our car­ni­val grow to the mag­ni­tude that it’s be­ing in­clud­ed in Ja­maica and say we don’t want al­lyuh (sic) here,” she said.

Lyons-Al­varez said the ‘Mu­sic Fes­ti­val’ was a show and not Vy­bz Kar­tel tak­ing over the Car­ni­val.

She said T&T’s cul­ture was not so fee­ble that the pres­ence of artistes from oth­er gen­res would make peo­ple not love the “Great­est Show on Earth” any­more.

“I’ve seen many ma­jor celebri­ties come to Trinidad in one form or the oth­er, and we are still here, and we are go­ing to con­tin­ue be­ing here,” she said.

Lyons-Al­varez, the for­mer chair­man of the ISM, wished peo­ple used the same en­er­gy to sup­port the com­pe­ti­tion that was syn­ony­mous with that day.

“In 2019, how many peo­ple came and sup­port­ed, and then how many peo­ple came the next year and the year af­ter that? In fact, So­ca Monarch has not ex­ist­ed in any form for a cou­ple of years, and I ain’t see no out­cry. I’m just say­ing if you miss your ba­by, we should see some en­er­gy for you miss­ing your child,” she added.

She said maybe Trin­bag­o­ni­ans should put their en­er­gy in­to mo­ti­vat­ing the artiste to re­turn to So­ca Monarch be­cause we are fight­ing for a date that’s of sig­nif­i­cance, but the thing that made it sig­nif­i­cant does not ex­ist.

“Okay let’s say we can­cel the Vy­bz Kar­tel show, what do we have?” she asked.