Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of gang cul­ture is—and has al­ways been—a dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of Trini­bad mu­sic.

Raw and ex­plic­it lyrics and videos de­pict­ing vi­o­lence are key com­po­nents of this grit­ty, street-dri­ven dance­hall-in­spired genre that has bro­ken out of its un­der­world con­fines to at­tract con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion and no­to­ri­ety.

The mu­sic’s suc­cess, mea­sured in the num­ber of up­loads on plat­forms like YouTube, is with­out ques­tion.

Lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, Trini­bad artistes have been get­ting a lot of at­ten­tion, as much for their mu­sic as for the lifestyle and cul­ture they por­tray.

There­fore, it comes as no sur­prise that law en­force­ment agen­cies in some ju­ris­dic­tions are now tak­ing ac­tion out of con­cern about pos­si­ble threats to pub­lic safe­ty.

The de­ci­sion by the St Kitts and Nevis Po­lice Force to ban Kman 6ixx, a ris­ing star on the Trini­bad cir­cuit who was due to head­line a con­cert there in March, is the lat­est push back from a re­gion­al au­thor­i­ty to the mu­sic and its pro­po­nents.

Their con­cerns about his mu­sic’s ex­plic­it en­dorse­ment of vi­o­lence and pro­mo­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, were the same rea­sons giv­en by the au­thor­i­ties in Grena­da to re­strict the artiste from per­form­ing at a 50th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary con­cert there this week. Pre­ced­ing the out­right ban, there had been an out­cry from the Grena­di­an pub­lic.

How­ev­er, can­celled per­for­mances might be the least of the prob­lems fac­ing Kman 6ixx, who was in po­lice cus­tody here in T&T at the time that the St Kitts ban was made pub­lic.

His man­age­ment team did not dis­close the rea­son for his de­ten­tion but the TTPS yes­ter­day re­vealed he had been charged with be­ing a gang mem­ber and for pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion. The artiste has been mak­ing head­lines for all the wrong rea­sons of late, promi­nent among them a dead­ly at­tack in St Au­gus­tine in De­cem­ber in which three of mem­bers of his en­tourage were killed. Kman 6ixx was al­so the ap­par­ent tar­get in an­oth­er fa­tal shoot­ing in Oc­to­ber on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, part of a dis­turb­ing trend in re­cent years where Trini­bad artistes have ei­ther been killed or at­tempts made on their lives.

Not too long ago, at the height of his fame, Kyle “Rebel Sixx” George, was shot dead at his home in Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca. In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, Brid­get James was killed by bul­lets in­tend­ed for her boyfriend, Trini­bad artiste Kalon­ji Arthur, in the park­ing lot of The Brix Ho­tel in Cas­cade.

How­ev­er, dead­ly vi­o­lence has not de­terred the mu­sic, which has been sweep­ing the coun­try and con­tin­ues to have a mas­sive in­flu­ence on our youth pop­u­la­tion.

There­fore, like their coun­ter­parts in St Kitts and Grena­da, law en­force­ment here has many rea­sons to be con­cerned about the in­creas­ing reach of this niche sub­cul­ture across T&T.

Like the gang­ster lifestyle it glo­ri­fies and pro­motes, the mu­sic is solid­ly based in this coun­try’s work­ing class “hot spot” com­mu­ni­ties.

Anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion sug­gests that some Trini­bad mu­sic videos have trig­gered con­flicts among war­ring crim­i­nal gangs that es­ca­lat­ed in­to shoot­ings. The grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of mu­sic with less than sub­tle mes­sages pro­mot­ing vi­o­lence, ag­gres­sion and con­flict, says a lot about the state of T&T so­ci­ety and the ur­gent need for in­ter­ven­tions to re­verse that down­ward spi­ral.

It has been ar­gued that Trini­bad, like dance­hall, hip-hop and oth­er gen­res, pro­vides mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion for the op­pressed, pow­er­less, vul­ner­a­ble and un­der­rep­re­sent­ed, and can be shift­ed in a more pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.

So far, how­ev­er, that pos­i­tiv­i­ty isn’t ap­par­ent and in a na­tion wracked by vi­o­lence, that is a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern and rea­son for ac­tion.