Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

CEO of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) Cyn­thia Red­dock-Downes says the au­thor­i­ty has tak­en note of songs glo­ri­fy­ing weapons, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and drug use and be­lieves ac­tion is need­ed in the face of grow­ing anx­i­ety.

“Cer­tain­ly it is an area the au­thor­i­ty is con­cerned about and we will do what we can and best with­in our pow­ers to do,” she said.

Red­dock-Downes’ com­ment came amid grow­ing con­cern about the neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of Trini­bad mu­sic.

At the open­ing of the 46th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing last week, Guyana Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali called for artistes in the re­gion to fo­cus on pos­i­tiv­i­ty in their mu­sic and briefly ref­er­enced a de­ci­sion to bar cer­tain artistes from per­form­ing in his coun­try.  

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley lat­er com­ment­ed that ban­ning Trini­bad mu­sic might not be ben­e­fi­cial but there is need to clean up the lyrics.

Con­cerns about the ef­fect of vi­o­lent mu­sic is backed up by re­search, be­hav­iour­al psy­chol­o­gist Steve Bai­ley told Guardian Me­dia. He ex­plained that mu­sic can trig­ger mem­o­ries, evoke emo­tions and al­ter ac­tions.

“Mu­sic can ac­tu­al­ly con­tribute what we call in psy­chol­o­gy an al­tered state of con­scious­ness. Mu­sic is every­where, you go out in the yard and the birds are singing that is mu­sic, you hear a jin­gle dur­ing a com­mer­cial, that is mu­sic, you can­not get away from it. The way some­one is speak­ing even could be con­sid­ered mu­sic, it is what we are putting out that is im­por­tant,” he said.

Not­ing that dif­fer­ent gen­res can have vary­ing im­pacts on in­di­vid­u­als, Bai­ley cit­ed a study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Per­son­al­i­ty and So­cial Psy­chol­o­gy which states, “Vi­o­lent song lyrics in­crease neg­a­tive emo­tions and thoughts that can lead to ag­gres­sion.”

He said any ac­tion to re­duce vi­o­lence in mu­sic, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion, will be a step in the right di­rec­tion.

“With the cur­rent lyrics that we have, vi­o­lent lyrics, it will ac­tu­al­ly cause de­sen­si­ti­sa­tion to­wards crime and hard­ships and it al­so gives the lis­ten­er a con­duit where they can be­come some­thing where they are more ma­te­ri­al­ly com­fort­able.

“Take some­one for in­stance who is im­pact­ed by ma­te­r­i­al de­pri­va­tion and that per­son may be lis­ten­ing to his or her favourite artiste and the artiste is say­ing words and mak­ing sug­ges­tions to the per­son that the per­son will prob­a­bly want to em­u­late or mod­el,” he said.

How­ev­er, mu­sic pro­duc­er Richard “DJ Punz”Ro­mano, who is close­ly linked to the ori­gin of Trini­bad mu­sic, said while artistes must es­tab­lish a bal­ance in their lyrics, the genre can­not be blamed for the coun­try’s crime rate.

“Crime has been here for the longest time. If you pull up a chart of the mur­der rate in­crease from 1950 to now, there is no huge spike of crime in­creas­ing af­ter the Trini­bad mu­sic. The Gov­ern­ment should fo­cus on crime be­cause blam­ing the Trini­bad will nev­er solve crime,” he said.

Ro­mano ad­vised peo­ple in­volved in the in­dus­try against as­so­ci­at­ing with crime. He gave the warn­ing af­ter artiste Medz Boss (Joseph Ol­liv­erre) was charged for be­ing a gang mem­ber.

“Don’t get tie up in things you should not be in­volved in. This Trini­bad move­ment have po­ten­tial to be just as big as Ja­maican dance­hall, hip hop, reg­gae. The artistes just have to fo­cus and do the right thing,” Ro­mano said.

Last month, Trini­bad artiste Kman Sixx (Kashiff Sankar) was charged with gang re­lat­ed of­fences. He was al­so banned from per­form­ing in some Caribbean coun­tries be­cause he is con­sid­ered a se­cu­ri­ty risk. Last year, Sankar was in­volved in a shoot-out along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt high­way which claimed the lives of four peo­ple.