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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Fans miss out on top T&T soca act: No Bunji to blaze Tobago jazz fire

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20140425

Cit­ing "dis­re­spect" and "poor or­gan­i­sa­tion," Ian "Bun­ji Gar­lin" Al­varez and his band the Asy­lum Vikings last night pulled out of the an­nu­al To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence, af­ter the or­gan­is­ers of the event failed to pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion for the en­tire band.Al­varez and his Asy­lum Vikings were sup­posed to close last night's show­piece con­cert, which al­so fea­tured Amer­i­can singers John Leg­end, Brandy and lo­cal crossover band Dil-E-Nadan, at Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park.

But, Al­varez, who is still get­ting ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion for his 2013 hit Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy, said he was dis­sat­is­fied with the arrange­ments made by the or­gan­is­ers, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, af­ter learn­ing of the in­ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion for his 17-strong band.He told the T&T Guardian that when the band's man­ag­er Dex­ter Thomas ar­rived at the Grafton Beach Re­sort yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to or­gan­ise check-in and rooms, he was told some of the band mem­bers were not list­ed in the ho­tel's reser­va­tion sys­tem.

Al­varez said, how­ev­er, the band signed the con­tract for ap­pear­ing at the Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence on Jan­u­ary 23 and sent the full list of names for ac­com­mo­da­tion on March 18, so he was un­pre­pared to ac­cept any ex­cus­es for the book­ing er­ror."I feel it was dis­re­spect­ful that we were not giv­en prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tion," Al­varez said."I don't un­der­stand how plane tick­ets were bought for the band to fly from Trinidad, but when we get to the ho­tel we don't have enough rooms."

The band was sup­posed to have ten rooms, but on­ly six were al­lo­cat­ed.Al­varez was al­so con­cerned that not all of his band mem­bers were go­ing to be al­lowed ac­cess to drinks and food, since the ho­tel was all-in­clu­sive. He said it would have cost the band $4,000 to get arm bands to al­low mem­bers to ac­cess food and drinks alone.As such, he said they agreed to leave the is­land yes­ter­day since they had an­oth­er en­gage­ment in a cou­ple days.

"We were sup­posed to stay here un­til to­mor­row (to­day), and leave from To­ba­go to our next show in St Maarten. But we're go­ing home in­stead to or­gan­ise from there," he told the T&T Guardian.

Cri­sis sit­u­a­tion

Event co-or­di­na­tor John Arnold last night said it was un­for­tu­nate that the band was not part of the show.He said he spoke with Gar­lin's wife on Thurs­day and she ex­pressed con­cerns about sev­er­al things, in­clud­ing the ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion.Arnold said he told her that with just 24 hours to go be­fore the event there was not much he could do, but said he told her they could work on find­ing a sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tion.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, of­fi­cials from Grafton Beach Ho­tel called Arnold to say there was a cri­sis be­cause there were not enough rooms for the band."I told them to do what­ev­er they had to do to solve the sit­u­a­tion, I am au­tho­ris­ing them to do that," Arnold said."Even though we are try­ing to find a so­lu­tion, they (Asy­lum Vikings) were very an­noyed."It was un­for­tu­nate but I think it could have been hu­man er­ror and some com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sues, but we would have hoped to solve the prob­lem."

Asked whether there would be re­funds for pa­trons who felt they were not get­ting what they paid for, Arnold said he had no com­ment to make on that is­sue.Some 9,200 pa­trons were ex­pect­ed to at­tend the show and or­gan­is­ers said it was the biggest night ever for the event.The To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence con­tin­ues tonight with Ja­maican win­ner of last year's The Voice Tes­sanne Chin one of the head­line acts. The week­end ends to­mor­row with Beach Jazz Fi­es­ta head­lin­ers Earth, Wind and Fire and Amer­i­can soul singer Keyshia Cole.


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