Shane Su­perville &

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Months of an­tic­i­pa­tion and plan­ning came to an an­ti-cli­mac­tic end yes­ter­day morn­ing, as scores of pa­trons of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val left the show’s venue—the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain—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 Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer as the head­lin­er, and Ghana­ian-Amer­i­can singer Moliy, end­ed just af­ter 4 am with mu­sic played by a DJ.

But Kar­tel did not head­line the con­cert, hav­ing pulled out hours be­fore af­ter cit­ing dis­crep­an­cies be­tween the con­cert’s pro­mot­ers and his man­age­ment team over the fi­nal pay­ment of his fee. Moliy al­so pulled out hours be­fore the sched­uled start.

News of Kar­tel’s ab­sence emerged on so­cial me­dia hours be­fore show­time on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon and caused a stir among tick­ethold­ers, 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 pm. How­ev­er, tick­et scalpers out­side the venue’s en­trance told Guardian Me­dia that they felt the change in en­er­gy when they first ar­rived ear­ly on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice lat­er gave their at­ten­dance es­ti­mate at 5,000.

Scalper Glen­roy Jones said the ex­cite­ment sur­round­ing the event weeks be­fore ap­peared to have dis­si­pat­ed, point­ing to a rel­a­tive­ly slow trick­le of pa­trons in­to the event mere min­utes be­fore the show was ex­pect­ed to be­gin.

“I had my boys and them try­ing to sell tick­ets, but it not sell­ing. Every­body hear Vy­bz Kar­tel not com­ing and they want back their mon­ey.”

Be­tween 9 pm and the ap­pear­ance of the first live per­for­mance from pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo just af­ter mid­night, pa­trons were ser­e­nad­ed by mu­sic from DJs, as an­nounc­ers apol­o­gised for the late start and pro­vid­ed up­dates on when the show would be­gin.

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

“This is not what we spend mon­ey for,” one woman shout­ed from the VVIP sec­tion.

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 Guin­ness World record-hold­er quipped that he was “brave enough to per­form in front of an­gry Tri­nis,” be­fore clos­ing off his set.

Lo­cal chut­ney star Ravi B and Kar­ma, and so­ca acts KMC and Iw­er George fol­lowed, with on­ly the lat­ter re­al­ly man­ag­ing to move the crowd.

The on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al act of the evening was Ja­maican Akeeme “Chron­ic Law” Camp­bell, who man­aged to draw cheers and en­er­gy from the crowd, who sang along to his tunes.

Chron­ic Law pre­ced­ed lo­cal songstress La­dy La­va, who 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 the last one be­fore the show of­fi­cial­ly end­ed.

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

The an­nounc­er al­so took the time to thank pa­trons for still at­tend­ing the event de­spite the chal­lenges, but sev­er­al con­cert-go­ers hurled ob­scen­i­ties at him.

“What you cussing me for? My name on any par­ty? Bet­ter I didn’t tell them thanks be­cause they cussing me, some of them go­ing through prob­lems home,” the an­nounc­er said as he re­spond­ed to some irate pa­trons.

Both Kar­tel and Siz­zla, on their re­spec­tive In­sta­gram ac­counts, of­fered apolo­gies for not be­ing able to per­form, de­spite be­ing in the coun­try.

In a video post­ed to his In­sta­gram ac­count on Sat­ur­day evening, Kar­tel apol­o­gised to Trinida­di­an fans while al­so re­fer­ring to past meet­ings with the pro­mot­ers to dis­cuss his ap­pear­ance at the event.

Kar­tel said de­spite missed dead­lines and con­cerns over the pay­ment of fees, he urged his man­ag­er, Tee Jay, to show some flex­i­bil­i­ty and give the pro­mot­er "a bligh" in a bid to work with him.

"Tee Jay re­luc­tant­ly give you a bligh. You missed dead­line af­ter dead­line, me beg for you. I say Tee Jay give him a bligh.

"Re­mem­ber you (the pro­mot­er) want­ed to keep the show dur­ing Car­ni­val. I tell you, you can­not do that. Don't mess with the cul­ture."

He added that he felt some de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the out­come as he be­lieved not every pro­mot­er could han­dle a Vy­bz Kar­tel event, but still main­tained his re­spect for T&T's Gov­ern­ment and its peo­ple.

Sev­er­al pa­trons al­so vent­ed their frus­tra­tion phys­i­cal­ly, with one woman tak­ing to the stage af­ter the end and over­turn­ing equip­ment be­fore she was con­front­ed by se­cu­ri­ty. While se­cu­ri­ty were busy try­ing to con­trol and take her off the stage, how­ev­er, oth­er pa­trons be­gan hurl­ing ob­jects at them.

Fans vent on so­cial me­dia

One VVIP pa­tron told Guardian Me­dia that he did not nec­es­sar­i­ly feel the con­cert was a waste of mon­ey, but ad­mit­ted 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.”

US-based nurse Sonya (name was changed to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty) used her pre­cious va­ca­tion days to at­tend the con­cert. She was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to see Kar­tel per­form in Brook­lyn in April but end­ed up sell­ing her tick­et.

Sonya was con­vinced the Tri­ni show would be the bet­ter ex­pe­ri­ence, so she pur­chased her flight tick­et home long in ad­vance. She spent up­wards of TT$8,000 for her air­line and two VIP con­cert tick­ets.

“I’m just so dis­ap­point­ed. I feel like Kar­tel could have gone about it dif­fer­ent­ly. And al­so, all the peo­ple that are talk­ing and say­ing, like, oh, Kar­tel don’t need all that mon­ey, one point some­thing mil­lion. The man made, like, $14 mil­lion in Ja­maica. And I’m sor­ry if I sound shal­low, I can­not be­lieve that Guyana could af­ford Kar­tel and Trinidad can’t.

“I just feel like this pro­mot­er should have reached out to some­one else to try to fa­cil­i­tate this. Be­cause clear­ly, he needs help and clear­ly, he couldn’t ex­e­cute this vi­sion that he had. So, I don’t know who to blame. Is it the pro­mot­er? I’m kind of watch­ing Kar­tel with a lit­tle cut-eye.”

She added, “I was rest­ing on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon and then I woke up, and then I saw the news that Kar­tel re­al­ly isn’t com­ing and I’m like wow ... I just feel re­al­ly bad for the peo­ple that bought phys­i­cal tick­ets or even the peo­ple who used their deb­it cards or stuff be­cause I used an Amer­i­can cred­it card. I’m go­ing to dis­pute that charge. I don’t care. Be­cause num­ber one, I didn’t go. Two, what was ad­ver­tised, was not giv­en. So that is a clear rea­son for me to dis­pute my charge be­cause I paid for VIP,” she said.

The show, orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to take place on Car­ni­val Fri­day (Feb­ru­ary 28), was pushed back to May 31, af­ter pro­mot­ers Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment out­lined con­cerns over their abil­i­ty to de­liv­er a qual­i­ty per­for­mance dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

“Rather than com­pro­mis­ing on qual­i­ty, we made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to move the fes­ti­val to May 2025 so that we can de­liv­er the vi­brant, im­mer­sive fes­ti­val at­mos­phere you ex­pect and de­serve,” the pro­mot­ers said then.

Scores of pa­trons who at­tend­ed the event al­so took to so­cial me­dia to vent their dis­ap­point­ment. Some of them shared clips of the var­i­ous acts and of some of the in­ci­dents that oc­curred be­tween pa­trons and se­cu­ri­ty.