Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion head Kevon McKen­na is stress­ing that the re­stric­tion on songs pro­mot­ing gang cul­ture dur­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2026 is not tar­get­ing any par­tic­u­lar genre.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, McKen­na said any song—dance­hall or oth­er­wise—that pro­motes vi­o­lent con­tent or gang af­fil­i­a­tion will fall un­der the re­stric­tion.

The de­ci­sion to clamp down on cer­tain con­tent fol­lowed a Ju­ly 20 meet­ing with To­ba­go ACP Rishi Singh on mea­sures to en­sure a safe, en­joy­able and suc­cess­ful fes­ti­val.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Singh ap­pealed to the as­so­ci­a­tion “to sup­port na­tion­al ef­forts to dis­cour­age the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour through en­ter­tain­ment.”

He em­pha­sised that To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try re­lies heav­i­ly on the con­fi­dence of both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, and that pub­lic safe­ty re­mains fun­da­men­tal to the is­land’s con­tin­ued growth as a pre­mier tourism des­ti­na­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive en­ter­tain­ment by en­cour­ag­ing DJs and event or­gan­is­ers to fea­ture mu­sic with up­lift­ing and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble mes­sages, par­tic­u­lar­ly through­out the Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val sea­son.

It al­so pledged to con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with the TTPS and oth­er stake­hold­ers to fos­ter a safe and wel­com­ing Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence.