It’s 3 am, and the main act hasn’t yet ap­peared on the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage. The pre­vi­ous act end­ed 40 min­utes ago. These are the times I re­alise how much I like my bed. Leav­ing the con­cert is not an op­tion be­cause my car is parked in the yard of JB, who lives near­by, and JB seems to be hav­ing a grand time.

JB, Will and I have known each oth­er since short pants school days in Guyana. Usu­al­ly, JB would get some dance­hall reg­gae con­cert tick­ets, we’d park at his gat­ed apart­ment build­ing and walk the short dis­tance to the sa­van­nah. Beats the has­sle of Sa­van­nah park­ing.

JB and Will are well-heeled gen­tle­men but don’t see any sense in spring­ing for tick­ets with the max­i­mum num­ber of Vs pre­fixed to IP. Our spot was good, the view was great, and drinks were eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble. No peach schnapps, belli­nis or rare Mon­go­lian vod­ka, but we’re good.

This is the thing that T&T’s Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge seemed not to un­der­stand about the Vy­bz Kar­tel con­cert. The clien­tele was more of your bank­ing ex­ec­u­tive, your doc­tor and your den­tist than it was of im­pres­sion­able youths whose ears we need­ed to cov­er. Some con­cert­go­ers had spent the GDP of a small ba­nana re­pub­lic in the sa­lon in prepa­ra­tion. Con­certs and fetes have be­come very bougie.

Much has been said about the col­lapse of the May 31 event, but I’m go­ing to dis­til every­thing in­to one sim­ple point … Vy­bz Kar­tel bailed on a show he was sup­posed to head­line on­ly hours be­fore it was sched­uled to start.

The de­tails in the con­tract could yet show that he had cause. How­ev­er, he had a moral oblig­a­tion to his fans–a sense of du­ty not usu­al­ly enun­ci­at­ed in le­gal agree­ments be­tween artiste and pro­mot­er. There are le­gal and oth­er mech­a­nisms for es­tab­lish­ing facts, cul­pa­bil­i­ty and li­a­bil­i­ty, and–I can­not stress of­ten enough–those may line up on the side of the artiste, or they may not.

A moral oblig­a­tion isn’t legal­ly bind­ing. If breach­es of con­tract oc­curred, Kar­tel and oth­er artistes who pulled out may be with­in their rights to do so un­der the law, de­pend­ing on the break-point de­tails of the con­tract. How­ev­er, it’s a bad look.

Kar­tel’s fans, the peo­ple who turned up to see him per­form and didn’t, helped to make him the glob­al force he is to­day. He end­ed up look­ing out of touch with them–like some­one who mi­grat­ed up­town and for­got where he came from. Re­gard­less of whether T&T tick­et buy­ers get re­funds, he should con­sid­er a make-up, free con­cert.

The con­cert seemed ill-fat­ed from the start. The orig­i­nal date, Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, was scrapped af­ter protests about a reg­gae con­cert be­ing held on one of the car­ni­val’s holy days. The or­gan­is­ers were spared rainy sea­son show­ers on the night, but a big­ger prob­lem lay in wait.

The Min­is­ter of De­fence barred Kar­tel from ra­dio and TV in­ter­views, as well as a talk with school­child­ren. While both were with­in his pow­er, the re­stric­tions on me­dia ap­pear­ances amount­ed to un­nec­es­sary nan­ny­ing. Me­dia pro­fes­sion­als were per­fect­ly ca­pa­ble of ex­er­cis­ing good ed­i­to­r­i­al judge­ment around in­ter­views with the artiste. What did Sturge think would hap­pen? That he’d smoke from a chal­ice in the TV stu­dio and we’d be help­less to stop him? The min­is­ter should have left us to do our job.

There’s val­ue in a re­formed for­mer pris­on­er coun­selling chil­dren against tak­ing a path that could lead them to prison. Kar­tel has led a seem­ing­ly ex­em­plary life since his re­lease. He dotes on his Kur­dish/British fi­ancé Si­dem Öztürk and seems far re­moved from the wild lifestyles of most artistes. Kar­tel tried to take the sting out of the sit­u­a­tion, which some re­ports in­ter­pret­ed in­cor­rect­ly as back­ing the min­is­ter’s re­stric­tions.

The Privy Coun­cil over­turned Kar­tel’s mur­der con­vic­tion last year be­cause of ju­ror mis­con­duct in his ini­tial tri­al in Ja­maica. Sturge, in an­nounc­ing the lim­its on him, ques­tioned the sound­ness of the ju­di­cial ba­sis of his quashed con­vic­tion. The fine le­gal minds in the Gov­ern­ment ought not to be pick­ing and choos­ing which quashed con­vic­tions they ap­prove of and which they don’t. They don’t have to look far to grasp this prin­ci­ple.