The de­bate over dance­hall mu­sic be­ing played or per­formed dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son in this coun­try has been rag­ing on over the past few weeks. It resur­faced af­ter lo­cal artiste Kern Joseph aka Trinidad Kil­la hit fetes with his 2020 hit “Dyy Zess” but al­so per­formed his pop­u­lar lo­cal dance­hall tune “Gun­man in she hole.”

Joseph has had his say on the mat­ter but his man­ag­er, Deli­cia Pat­ter­son, has ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the con­ver­sa­tion.

She said “Trinidad Kil­la has been singing So­ca for the past 17yrs, even be­ing a past con­tes­tant at Syn­er­gy TV’s So­ca Star. As most youths do, when So­ca does not work for them, they grav­i­tate to the dance­hall genre. Now with his dance­hall hit, he is now be­ing brand­ed as a dance­hall artiste with per­sons fur­ther stat­ing that he should not be hired at fetes. Our fo­cus and mis­sion will al­ways be to sat­is­fy the crowd and ground move­ment.”

She added that “in this busi­ness, you will al­ways get good and bad pub­lic­i­ty and one must learn to rise above it all and stay hum­ble. Mu­sic is made to en­ter­tain and to feed the soul. We just did a show in the Ba­hamas and the Pro­mot­er there said to me “Pow­er in So­ca is the song to push, I stop push gun­man be­cause that song gone clear al­ready. He fur­ther stat­ed that “Dyy Zess”, Trinidad Kil­la’s So­ca con­tri­bu­tion is a great and pow­er­ful song and the peo­ple need to know it.”

She said, “If we are so pas­sion­ate about our cul­ture then the big­ger de­bate should be why is there a So­ca switch on Box­ing Day and Ash Wednes­day?”

And while many are hav­ing their say, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia, the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for putting on the fetes and play­ing the mu­sic are speak­ing out as well. At least one ma­jor event or­gan­is­er, Cae­sar’s Army, sees no prob­lem with dance­hall in Car­ni­val, with­in rea­son.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Jules So­bion told Guardian Me­dia, “When it is we are hav­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al clien­tele com­ing to the Car­ni­val sea­son and it’s a lot of Caribbean peo­ple as well, I think that if Trinidad and To­ba­go is rep­re­sent­ing for So­ca and Chut­ney; Bar­ba­dos has Bash­ment, Ja­maica has Dance­hall, St Lu­cia has Den­nery, Grena­da has Jab, Do­mini­ca has Bouy­on, French West In­dies has Zouk and I think it all has a place in our Car­ni­val sea­son.”

His sen­ti­ments were echoed by Disc Jock­ey from SLAM 100.5 FM, Ewart Mundy aka DJ Wat­ty, who ex­pressed the view that the mu­sic played is con­trolled by the peo­ple at­tend­ing the events.

“As djs we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to please the pa­trons. If you go an event and the pa­trons want to hear dance­hall there are cer­tain events you will have to play the Dance­hall be­cause you are play­ing for them.” Mundy said.

On so­cial me­dia, the views re­main mixed.

Tracey Michelle Gomez wrote, “Dance­hall (lo­cal or oth­er­wise) and so­ca should not mix for Car­ni­val. The vibe is not the same.”

But Al­lis­ter Phillip said, “Well so­ca does get played in par­ty off-sea­son so it’s on­ly fair dance hall get a touch for Car­ni­val.”

Bran­don Stoute went a bit fur­ther, he said, “So­ca mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing Car­ni­val Sea­son brings a vibe that mas­quer­aders and non mas­quer­aders love, Dance­hall is al­so an­oth­er favourite genre of mu­sic that brings its own vibe. Per­son­al­ly if the two can clash and bring a vibe that every­one will love then, by all means, put them to­geth­er and let’s en­joy the vibe!”