It is cer­tain that the whole sto­ry re­gard­ing the re­fusal of well-known Ja­maican dance­hall star Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer to per­form at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sat­ur­day has not yet been told.

At this point, and ac­cord­ing to the re­port­ed state­ment by man­agers of the artiste, the agree­ment was for the out­stand­ing por­tion of the par­tic­i­pa­tion fee to be paid be­fore Kar­tel ap­peared on stage. The sto­ry from the pro­mot­ers is that while the US$950,000 ad­vance pay­ment was made, the pub­lic hol­i­day on Fri­day, and pre­sum­ably the time re­stric­tions in­volved, pre­vent­ed set­tle­ment of the rest of the fee, ie, they were un­able to get the US cur­ren­cy from the Cen­tral Bank.

Des­per­ate to have the dance­hall artiste ap­pear at the show, of­fers were said to have been made to the man­agers of the artiste that the pro­mot­ers were will­ing to give them prop­er­ty val­ued at over TT$12 mil­lion as se­cu­ri­ty as­sur­ance un­til the rest of the per­for­mance fee was paid.

But Vy­bz Kar­tel’s man­age­ment was re­port­ed­ly un­pre­pared to take up the of­fer and so as far as they were con­cerned non-pay­ment of the to­tal fee agreed to equat­ed to no per­for­mance.

Apart from every oth­er re­gret, those per­sons who had bought in­to the show, ob­vi­ous­ly on the ba­sis of hear­ing and see­ing this renowned dance­hall star, were left dis­ap­point­ed and no doubt want­i­ng their monies back as they did not get to hear and en­joy the main act for which they paid good mon­ey.

But there was the added ag­gra­va­tion of oth­er for­eign acts, Siz­zla Kalon­ji, Malie Donn and Rvss­ian, all Ja­maicans, and Moliy, a Ghana­ian-Amer­i­can singer, al­so pulling out for sim­i­lar con­trac­tu­al is­sues.

It has been re­port­ed that the pro­mot­ers will at­tempt to make some form of resti­tu­tion for their fail­ure to de­liv­er on their promis­es; that is sure to be an­oth­er sto­ry of dis­agree­ment over what is owed.

The rea­son, more like an ex­cuse, of­fered by the show or­gan­is­ers for not be­ing able to make the full pay­ment was to the ef­fect that the In­di­an Ar­rival Day hol­i­day on Fri­day pre­vent­ed them from se­cur­ing the US dol­lars from the Cen­tral Bank. A quite poor ex­cuse: did they not know be­fore­hand that the Cen­tral Bank would not be open for busi­ness on Fri­day? Were the con­di­tions for pay­ment and per­for­mance not laid out be­fore­hand so that they, the pro­mot­ers, would be ful­ly aware of what was ac­cept­able and what was not?

As­sum­ing that the pro­mot­ers were not first-time or­gan­is­ers of such a show, they should have done all that was pos­si­ble with­in the re­quired time frame to make the pay­ments they were com­mit­ted to.

On the oth­er side, and there are al­ways sev­er­al sides to a sto­ry, there will sure­ly be those who will think that the Kar­tel man­age­ment should have been more pa­tient and un­der­stand­ing and, giv­en the guar­an­tees of hold­ing the deed to prop­er­ty which could val­ue more than what was out­stand­ing to the artiste, could have com­pro­mised in the cir­cum­stances.

Still, the end re­sult was a ma­jor dis­ap­point­ment to the fans and a blot on the char­ac­ter of the T&T pro­mo­tion in­dus­try as fa­cil­i­ta­tors of ma­jor con­cert events in­volv­ing for­eign acts.

Notwith­stand­ing this, busi­ness is busi­ness and pro­mot­ers of cul­tur­al and all oth­er events can­not be slack in keep­ing to agree­ments signed; the bot­tom line around which there is very lit­tle room to wan­der.