Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Ja­maican reg­gae icon Siz­zla Kalon­ji left T&T’s gang­sters a se­ri­ous mes­sage on the Re­demp­tion 9 stage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day.

Siz­zla warned, “We don’t want no gang­ster, no gang, no you, no me. Be­cause it’s young gang­sters that we’re tak­ing and killing each oth­er. It doesn’t work in Ja­maica, so it must not work in Trinidad.”

Siz­zla, whose re­al name is Miguel Collins, seemed vis­i­bly ir­ri­tat­ed by the crime in this coun­try. He not­ed that the “clash” that reg­gae icons like Su­per Cat and Shab­ba Ranks en­gage in were just for ‘dub plates’ and not to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly.

“We do a lot of gang­ster stuff in Ja­maica, just for the play sys­tem and sound sys­tem,” Siz­zla ex­plained.

“Don’t say any gang­ster songs in the mu­sic and start killing each oth­er. It’s not right. We don’t do that in Ja­maica. Cut it out.”

The 48-year-old con­scious artiste called out to the Trini­bad artistes to “straight­en out the thing”.

Jamaica reggae artiste Christopher Martin performs with soca artiste Farmer Nappy during Redemption 9.

KERWIN PIERRE

He of­fered an al­ter­na­tive to the gang­sters.

“My mes­sage to you is for you to form a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. Every young­ster must form a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and start do­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices.

“Get a busi­ness, which is an NGO where you can be tax-ex­empt and let fam­i­lies all over the world sup­port the chil­dren in Trinidad.”

Siz­zla, who was dressed in a grey suit, white shirt a white bow tie, with his match­ing tur­ban show­ing his Bobo Ashan­ti Rasta­far­i­an be­liefs, even­tu­al­ly went through an hour-long reper­toire with hits that in­clud­ed Man Woman and Child, Thank You Ma­ma, We Got it Right here and Just one of Those Days.

Af­ter Siz­zla’s set, it was time for Su­per Cat to grace the stage. Clad in a three-piece suit, he ren­dered Come Down. Even at age 60, the Ja­maica vet­er­an showed no signs of slow­ing down as he per­formed Un­der Pres­sure with a skill sim­i­lar to the time he re­leased the hit sin­gle as a 20-year-old in 1984. He took the Re­demp­tion crowd down mem­o­ry lane with hits like Cry for the Youth, Say Boops Deh, Nuff Man ah Dead and Don Da­da be­fore he end­ed his 42-minute set with Ghet­to Red Hot and ‘I’m Leav­ing on a Jet Plane.

Ear­li­er, the show start­ed on time, and af­ter the open­ing Na­tion­al An­them, leg­endary reg­gae group Steel Pulse made their way on­to the stage.

Jamaica dancehall artiste Super Cat during his set

KERWIN PIERRE

David Hinds, one of two found­ing mem­bers of the band, which was 49 years ago in Birm­ing­ham, Unit­ed King­dom, said they were hap­py to per­form again be­fore a T&T crowd.

The last time they did so was in 1984 at the Spek­taku­la Fo­rum.

They went through their clas­sics in­clud­ing King James Ver­sion and Life With­out Mu­sic.

Bermu­dan Col­lie Bud­dz did not dis­ap­point the crowd with Come Around and Ma­maci­ta.

Christo­pher Mar­tin fol­lowed the Bermu­dan and even teased with so­ca hit Gal Like Rain, for which he brought Farmer Nap­py on stage to sing with him.

Mr King then teased the faith­ful with John John but held back on The Call. He ex­plained that the com­plex­i­ty of singing the song with Prophet Ben­jamin, Isas­ha, King David and Zig­gy Rank­ing did not al­low him to sing it. He did say he is do­ing more in ad­di­tion to The Call and will use the song as a tool to bring about a pos­i­tive change in the coun­try.

Jamelody, the oth­er lo­cal­ly billed act on the night, al­so wooed the au­di­ence with his hits.