Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As the sun set yes­ter­day evening, un­cer­tain­ty rose among those at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah as to what the sta­tus of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val con­cert was in the af­ter­math of its main act, Adid­ja Palmer—pro­fes­sion­al­ly known as Vy­bz Kar­tel—pulling out due to con­trac­tu­al dis­crep­an­cies.

Both pa­trons and ven­dors were left frus­trat­ed as the or­gan­is­ers went ahead with the show with­out its star per­former.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the venue two hours be­fore the show was sched­uled to start, some ven­dors were loud­ly ques­tion­ing whether they should re­main at the venue.

Speak­ing to a ven­dor who said he paid $5,000 to sell in­side the venue of the con­cert, the man added, “At the mo­ment I am un­cer­tain whether the con­cert will go ahead or not. Even if it goes ahead, with Vy­bz Kar­tel not com­ing, I’m not sure what the crowd will be like so I’m not sure to make back the mon­ey I paid to sell here.”

On an­oth­er end of the main stage, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from a pop­u­lar wa­ter brand told Guardian Me­dia they were in­struct­ed by their man­agers to pack up in the event there were ri­ots be­cause of Palmer’s no-show.

CNC3 tele­vi­sion asked its fol­low­ers on Face­book if they bought a tick­et and if they’d still be at­tend­ing the show giv­en Palmer pulling out.

One per­son com­ment­ed, “I want back my mon­ey. I’m not in­ter­est­ed in those oth­er artistes. Noth­ing against them but I on­ly bought the tick­et to see one per­son.”

An­oth­er per­son stat­ed, “I’m not com­ing to that event if he is not there. This is the whole point of this con­cert. I want my mon­ey back please.”

An­oth­er per­son added, “Would those that bought tick­ets be re­fund­ed? Seems like a mas­sive MON­EY GRAB by the pro­mot­ers if they don’t give back pa­trons their mon­ey even though they now wouldn’t have to pay the 1.3 mil­lion Kar­tel re­quest­ed.”

The call for re­funds was a com­mon one among those who com­ment­ed with an­oth­er say­ing, “We the pa­trons would like a re­im­burse­ment, please. This ut­ter non­sense isn’t our fault re­gard­less of what took place. We paid for a cer­tain artiste per­for­mance. $5,000 for a back­stage, $2,700 VVIP. This to­tal mad­ness.”

The or­gan­is­ers have com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing how pa­trons will be re­im­bursed. An of­fi­cial ac­knowl­edged that some form of com­pen­sa­tion may be nec­es­sary and not­ed that this will be dis­cussed and fi­nalised in the com­ing days.