Aba A Luke

Out of the dark­ness comes the light. On Thurs­day, reg­gae/dance­hall croon­er, Bu­ju Ban­ton, whose re­al name is Mark Myrie, was sen­tenced in a Flori­da court to serve ten years in jail for his con­vic­tions on a charge of con­spir­a­cy to pos­sess with the in­tent to dis­trib­ute co­caine. An ad­di­tion­al gun charge, that would have seen the artiste re­ceive an­oth­er five years in prison, was dropped by pre­sid­ing judge Jim Moody.

Prepar­ing for the worst; thank­ful for the re­sult

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian one day af­ter the sen­tenc­ing, Ban­ton's man­ag­er, Traci Mc­Greg­gor, said it's been a jour­ney. Her ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the con­cern shown by the news­pa­per and the T&T pub­lic in gen­er­al, was ap­par­ent. "It has not been easy," she re­peat­ed, adding, "along the way we ac­cept­ed that cer­tain things were go­ing to hap­pen and we spent the time prepar­ing in the last cou­ple months, and truth­ful­ly we over-pre­pared our­selves be­cause re­al­ly and tru­ly we were pre­pared for the worst and what hap­pened yes­ter­day, was not that." Mc­Greg­gor high­light­ed that the pros­e­cu­tor, Jim Pre­ston, was vis­i­bly up­set by the out­come. She said Pre­ston had tried to get the charges el­e­vat­ed against Bu­ju, so that he would have been sit­ting be­hind bars for 20-25 years. "We're so thank­ful. The judge al­so said he would rec­om­mend that Bu­ju stay close to Mi­a­mi where the fam­i­ly is," said Mc­Greg­gor. "We're good, we're good," she ex­claimed joy­ful­ly, in the same breath as­sur­ing that there would be an ap­peal.

Keep a still tongue

Re­flect­ing on the days pri­or to sen­tenc­ing, she said she spoke with the In­no­cent singer just one week be­fore, and she told him she knew there were many things that he want­ed to say, but should hold it, let go of the anger and let the judge guide the re­sult. She said the team of at­tor­neys looked at a num­ber of sce­nar­ios of how things could have gone, and the key thing was the gun charge be­ing dropped.

"Once that gun charge was dropped, it just opened up a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties. We were heart­bro­ken for months but yes­ter­day, we were thank­ful." Mc­Greg­gor said the team un­der­stands that it will have to deal with the INS in the fu­ture for Bu­ju to be al­lowed en­try in­to the US again, but for now that sit­u­a­tion re­mained of lit­tle con­cern to the team. "We have our im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney in place, who has al­ready been work­ing on cer­tain things, and we know that there will be con­straints down the road. We are go­ing to ap­peal so the case is still open. Any­thing can be over­turned at any point in time. The on­ly thing that is set in stone at this time is that he will be do­ing a bit of time, but noth­ing else is set in stone," she as­sured.

Bu­ju-used as an ex­am­ple

High­light­ing that Bu­ju Ban­ton was an artiste of ex­tra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty, Mc­Greg­gor said that in the In­ner Cir­cle camp, they were thank­ful for the re­sult. "The fam­i­ly and every­one is fine now. We ex­pect­ed the un­fath­omable and now, we are so grate­ful." She ex­tend­ed thanks to Bu­ju's fan base, ac­knowl­edg­ing that the artiste had been able to touch so many peo­ple through his mu­sic, over the years. "Bu­ju has been used as an ex­am­ple and if that is what God wants right now, well...he will be a mod­el pris­on­er as he has been. We're ex­cit­ed about things we have planned as part of keep­ing his mu­sic and lega­cy in tact. It won't be dif­fi­cult be­cause of his mu­sic. "How­ev­er, we do have an al­bum that we're drop­ping next year," she an­nounced.

The al­bum, which is yet to be ti­tled, was com­plet­ed while Bu­ju was out on bond, await­ing the sec­ond tri­al. "We don't have a ti­tle yet, but that will be left up to Bu­ju. It will be dropped next year and we al­so have a few oth­er projects that we've been work­ing on," said the artiste's man­ag­er, adding that the team would be work­ing on re­do­ing the Gargamel Mu­sic Web site, while con­tin­u­ing to fo­cus on Bu­ju's brand and lega­cy. "To the fans, we are so thank­ful for all the sup­port. We couldn't have got­ten through this with­out you, and we won't let you down. The strug­gle con­tin­ues and the move­ment con­tin­ues. Our tears are dried now, we have work to do," Mc­Greg­gor con­clud­ed.