Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ja­maican dance­hall star Adid­ja "Vy­bz Kar­tel" Palmer is blam­ing the pro­mot­er of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val for the fi­as­co that led to him pulling out of the event hours be­fore it was sched­uled to kick off due to a con­trac­tu­al dis­agree­ment.

In a post on his In­sta­gram page on Sat­ur­day, Kar­tel said he knew main pro­mot­er Odane An­der­son, of Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment, for years and the sign­ing of the agree­ment was record­ed with his at­tor­ney and man­ag­er present.

Kar­tel said his man­ag­er, on his in­sis­tence, gave the pro­mot­er “a bligh” when is­sues came up but that was not fruit­ful.

“Yuh miss dead­line af­ter dead­line. Me beg fi him, me say TJ give him a bligh,” Kar­tel said adding that the pro­mot­er brought him to log­ger­heads with the Gov­ern­ment af­ter he filled his itin­er­ary with vis­its to schools, me­dia in­ter­views and com­mu­ni­ty walks.

These events prompt­ed De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to in­ter­vene and lim­it Kar­tel’s move­ment be­fore he was sup­posed to come to Trinidad.

In an­nounc­ing his de­ci­sion to pull out of the con­cert on Sat­ur­day, Kar­tel said the pro­mot­er had failed to pay the full US$1.35 mil­lion fee be­fore his per­for­mance. How­ev­er, the or­gan­is­ers in­sist­ed that US$950,000—more than three-quar­ters of the amount—had al­ready been de­liv­ered to Kar­tel and they had tried to make an arrange­ment af­ter they could not source the re­main­der from the bank due to the pub­lic hol­i­day on Fri­day. An of­fi­cial rep­re­sent­ing the or­gan­is­ing team told Guardian Me­dia that af­ter the ini­tial com­ple­tion pay­ment of­fer was re­ject­ed, a new pro­pos­al was made to Palmer—this time in­volv­ing the trans­fer of four con­do­mini­ums in Trinidad, each val­ued at $2.9 mil­lion—but this too was re­ject­ed.

Kar­tel's com­pa­tri­ots, Malie Donn, Rvss­ian and Siz­zla Kalon­ji, as well as Ghana­ian/Amer­i­can singer Moliy al­so pulled out of the con­cert al­though they were here, cit­ing sim­i­lar is­sues with the pro­mot­er be­ing un­able to ful­fil con­trac­tu­al agree­ments.

In the video, Kar­tel al­so men­tioned the is­sues raised when the con­cert was first sched­uled for Car­ni­val Fri­day, and he was against it, say­ing they should not seek to com­pete against the cul­ture of T&T.

Kar­tel then apol­o­gised to the pa­trons and ad­vised the pro­mot­er that he was un­able to han­dle an artiste of his (Kar­tel's) cal­i­bre.

“My on­ly re­gret in this sit­u­a­tion is that a Trinidad peo­ple, ah dem yuh rob out ah a chance to see Kar­tel af­ter so many years. So ah pos­i­tiv­i­ty me ah deal with and good en­er­gy, so me ah me apol­o­gise to the Trinidad peo­ple. Big up the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad. Me blame my­self in some way be­cause me should ah know not every pro­mot­er can man­age Vy­bz Kar­tel. It takes a lot.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on his non-ap­pear­ance was Miguel "Siz­zla Kalon­ji" Collins. In a so­cial me­dia post, his man­age­ment team said while he and his band were in the coun­try, he did not per­form be­cause of a con­trac­tu­al breach.

“Af­ter weeks of back-and-forth com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mul­ti­ple at­tempts to re­solve pend­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues, Siz­zla’s man­age­ment team and agent Is­land Vibe Agency has made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to with­draw from the event due to the pro­mot­er’s fail­ure to meet key terms out­lined in the per­for­mance agree­ment.”

The re­lease added that while Siz­zla was ea­ger to per­form, it came down to pro­fes­sion­al­ism and prin­ci­ple.

“While this out­come is dis­ap­point­ing, the team re­mains hope­ful for fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­turn un­der bet­ter cir­cum­stances. To all sup­port­ers and Siz­zla fans in T&T, your love has nev­er gone un­no­ticed. Thank you for your con­tin­ued sup­port and un­der­stand­ing - we look for­ward to de­liv­er­ing an un­for­get­table per­for­mance very soon.”