PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

New­ly in­stalled Chair­man of Cari­com Pres­i­dent of Guyana Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali has called for artistes in the re­gion to fo­cus on pos­i­tiv­i­ty in their mu­sic.

In his ad­dress at the open­ing of the 46th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in George­town yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Ali stressed that the re­gion need­ed to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to its cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion to the world.

“We in Guyana have tak­en a very con­scious de­ci­sion in en­sur­ing that we in­vest in cul­ture as a tool and mech­a­nism of uni­fy­ing our peo­ple and as a tool and mech­a­nism of telling the sto­ry of who we are as a peo­ple. And in this re­gion, we owe it to the gen­er­a­tion ahead of us, to keep our alive and to in­vest in this cul­ture, be­cause cul­ture is what dis­tin­guish­es us from any oth­er re­gion. Cul­ture is dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from any oth­er re­gion,” he said.

Ali urged up­com­ing artistes not to pro­mote vi­o­lence in their mu­sic and briefly ref­er­enced the de­ci­sion to bar cer­tain artistes from per­form­ing in his coun­try.

“We do not need lyrics that pro­mote vi­o­lence in this re­gion. We have the abil­i­ty to pro­mote good lyrics and lyrics that will move peo­ple in the pos­i­tive di­rec­tion and move peo­ple to think act and be­have pos­i­tive­ly. As lead­ers of this re­gion, we have to take this sit­u­a­tion very se­ri­ous­ly and en­sure the lyrics of the re­gion is the lyrics of Bob Mar­ley. the lyrics of pos­i­tiv­i­ty and the lyrics of pos­i­tive liv­ing and pos­i­tive change. We must take this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on to­day,” said Pres­i­dent Ali.

Last week Guyana be­came the lat­est coun­try to bar Trini­bad artiste Kman 6ixx (Kashif Sankar) from en­ter­ing its coun­try to per­form. The artiste was re­port­ed­ly banned from en­ter­ing the South Amer­i­can na­tion based on in­for­ma­tion that a hit might be car­ried out on him while he was there.

An at­tempt was made on the life of the artiste up­on his re­turn to T&T in De­cem­ber re­sult­ing in the deaths of four peo­ple in a brazen day­light at­tack.

The artiste was banned from per­form­ing in St Kitt’s and Nevis and Grena­da ear­li­er this year.

Kman 6ixx had stat­ed he in­tend­ed to pro­mote more pos­i­tive mu­sic in an in­ter­view with a Grena­di­an jour­nal­ist last month.

Pres­i­dent Ali said the top­ic of ban­ning artistes was dis­cussed with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“For some, this may seem a soft is­sue, but this is a fun­da­men­tal is­sue. On­ly re­cent­ly Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and I are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion when many young peo­ple young, bril­liant peo­ple ques­tion the de­ci­sion of not hav­ing a cer­tain artiste per­form in the coun­try. Be­cause au­thor­i­ties (have stat­ed the artiste) is on an In­ter­pol red list. “

He added: “We can­not al­low our cul­ture to be cap­tured in this nar­ra­tive. We have to lead a rev­o­lu­tion against this nar­ra­tive and repo­si­tion our cul­ture in the way it was con­ceived. That is for pos­i­tive liv­ing and pos­i­tive up­lift­ment. And this is not about any­one or against any­one this is for our re­gion and for the fu­ture of the young peo­ple in this re­gion.”

Yeste­day’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny was al­so ad­dressed by Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett and Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, the out­go­ing Chair­man of Cari­com and Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca

Key is­sues of im­por­tance to the re­gion will be dis­cussed dur­ing the four-day meet­ing, in­clud­ing the hu­man­i­tar­i­an and se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Haiti and plans for the T-20 Crick­et World Cup that the re­gion will host in June.

The Cari­com lead­ers will al­so dis­cuss the Guyana-Venezuela bor­der is­sue along with the Be­lize-Guatemala de­mar­ca­tion claim.

Dis­cus­sions will be held with Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Luiz Ina­cio Lu­la da Sil­va; Pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, Ilan Gold­fa­jn; Min­is­ter of State for For­eign Af­fairs, Sau­di Ara­bia, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir and Min­is­ter of State for In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Reem al Hashimy.

Oth­er items on the agen­da are Cli­mate Change and Cli­mate Fi­nanc­ing, Re­port from the Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on Repa­ra­tions, up­date on the sit­u­a­tion in the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Sta­tus of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice Trust Fund, De­vel­op­ments in the Mid­dle East: Is­rael’s Con­tin­ued Bomb­ing of Gaza and the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ment States to be held in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da in May.

The busi­ness ses­sions of the four-day meet­ing are tak­ing place at the Guyana Mar­riott Ho­tel