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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Sean Paul advises Trinibad artistes: Singing about violence brings it into your life

by

364 days ago
20240226

Mul­ti-plat­inum Gram­my Award-win­ning dance­hall artiste Sean Paul Hen­riques is once again ad­vis­ing Trini­bad artistes to strike a bal­ance with their mu­sic in­stead of fo­cus­ing on­ly on the neg­a­tive.

He made the state­ment af­ter he was asked about the sit­u­a­tion fac­ing Trini­bad artiste Kashif “Kman 6ixx” Sankar, who has been banned from per­form­ing in Grena­da, Guyana and sev­er­al re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries af­ter sur­viv­ing a dead­ly dri­ve-by shoot­ing on a high­way on his re­turn to T&T from per­form­ing in neigh­bour­ing Bar­ba­dos. Sankar was al­so re­cent­ly charged with be­ing af­fil­i­at­ed to a gang.

In a Zoom in­ter­view dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Sean Paul had ad­vised Trini­bad acts to “bal­ance their cat­a­logue with pos­i­tive mes­sages.”

Af­ter ap­pear­ing at the Is­land Mu­sic Con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day for a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with Ja­maican pub­li­cist and co-founder of the con­fer­ence Ju­dith Bod­ley, he was asked again about the sit­u­a­tion and any pos­si­ble ad­vice he could of­fer to artistes in that po­si­tion.

He said: “Peo­ple will do what dem want to do. You cyan lead the horse to the wa­ter, but you cyan make dem drink it, yuh see ...

“Me cyan on­ly tell yuh de truth wey me know. Writ­ing and singing and speak­ing about vi­o­lence brings it in­to your life more so, that’s all I can say. He must weigh him life and the peo­ple around him and his fam­i­ly and know there’s steps that he can take—where he has op­por­tu­ni­ties and doors open to him now—me na tell him fi sell out—he afi do what is true to him, but at the same point in time, well if we are gonna be artistes that re­flect life, re­flect some ah the light too cause every­thing that is dark is not the whole truth. There is al­ways light as well and we should speak about that as well as artistes.”

Sean Paul praised and thanked the peo­ple of T&T for sup­port­ing reg­gae and dance­hall mu­sic and cul­ture and said he was look­ing for­ward to re­turn­ing to the coun­try soon. He said he had rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­cent­ly for T&T Car­ni­val 2024.

“My wife came down for the Car­ni­val just the oth­er day, so I sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but ah doh reach yet and she bring back cou­ple dou­bles fi me so I was sat­is­fied ah lick­le bit, but ah wan come thru. It’s al­ways been a ter­ri­to­ry that has sup­port­ed reg­gae and dance­hall ... and my mu­sic es­pe­cial­ly too, so big up Trinidad and we soon for­ward.”

Scores of en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try per­son­nel from around the Caribbean and even as far as Zim­bab­we as­sem­bled in Kingston, Ja­maica, last week for the sopho­more edi­tion of the five-day Is­land Mu­sic Con­fer­ence, which host­ed by Di­a­mond-sell­ing, Gram­my Award win­ning su­per­star Orville “Shag­gy” Bur­rell, along­side co-founders Sharon Burke and Ju­dith Bod­ley.

The sem­i­nar fea­tured in­for­ma­tive and in­ter­ac­tive pan­el dis­cus­sions dai­ly with sev­er­al show­case and per­for­mance events night­ly, in­clud­ing the launch of Tee­jay’s new EP, I Am Chip­py, and an en­gag­ing con­cert fea­tur­ing up and com­ing young acts along­side re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stars such as Wyclef Jean, Stoneb­woy, Yohann Mar­ley and oth­ers.


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