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Sunday, June 22, 2025

OCM Patrons disappointed over "flat concert experience"

by

Shane Superville
21 days ago
20250602

Months of an­tic­i­pa­tion and plan­ning came to an an­ti-cli­mac­tic end on Sun­day morn­ing as scores of pa­trons of the One Caribbean Mu­sic (OCM) fes­ti­val left the show's venue - the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah - in no­tice­ably low­er spir­its than when they ar­rived.

The show which was ad­ver­tised as fea­tur­ing an all-star ros­ter of re­gion­al dance­hall acts, with Ja­maican su­per­star Vy­bz Kar­tel as the head­lin­er end­ed just af­ter 4 am with mu­sic played by a DJ.

Kar­tel - re­al name Adid­ja Palmer - did not head­line the con­cert cit­ing dis­crep­an­cies be­tween the con­cert's pro­mot­ers and his man­age­ment team.

News of his ab­sence emerged on so­cial me­dia, hours be­fore show­time on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon and caused a stir among tick­et-hold­ers who ques­tioned whether the con­cert would be worth at­tend­ing with­out the fea­tured act.

The gates to the venue's gen­er­al ad­mis­sion sec­tion were opened to the pub­lic just af­ter 9 am, how­ev­er the first live per­former of the evening did not ap­pear on-stage un­til af­ter mid­night.

While a few pa­trons tried to make the most of the ex­pe­ri­ence, clus­ters of frus­trat­ed con­cert-go­ers made their dis­sat­is­fac­tion clear.

Mu­si­cian Joshua Re­grel­lo, who was the open­ing act for the show did his best to move the au­di­ence with his ren­di­tions of so­ca and dance­hall clas­sics, but could not pro­voke a sig­nif­i­cant crowd re­sponse.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the luke­warm re­cep­tion, the world record-hold­er quipped that he was "brave enough to per­form in front of an­gry Tri­nis," be­fore clos­ing off his set.

The on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al act of the evening was Chron­ic Law who man­aged to draw cheers and en­er­gy from the crowd as he en­gaged the au­di­ence to sing along to his tunes.

Lo­cal songstress La­dy La­va al­so drew some ex­cite­ment from the crowd with her tunes and raunchy sto­ry-telling style as the last live per­for­mance of the evening.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter her per­for­mance how­ev­er there was a brief mu­si­cal in­ter­lude from a DJ, be­fore an MC an­nounced that the next song would be its last be­fore the show of­fi­cial­ly end­ed.

With no per­for­mances from Mallie Donn and Ja­maican reg­gae star Siz­zla, many con­fused pa­trons were heard ask­ing where the rest of the acts were.

One VVIP pa­tron told Guardian Me­dia that he did not nec­es­sar­i­ly feel the con­cert was a waste of mon­ey, but ad­mit­ted that he felt dis­ap­point­ed with the qual­i­ty of or­gan­i­sa­tion and pro­duc­tion from the pro­mot­er.

"I spent $2,700 to come in here on­ly be­cause it's my cousin's birth­day and I want­ed to do some­thing spe­cial.

"It's re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ing to me be­cause peo­ple come to ex­pect a good show."

InstagramVybz Kartel


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