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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Sizzla sets record straight on One Caribbean Music Festival

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
33 days ago
20250607
Jamaica raggae artist Sizzla Kalonji

Jamaica raggae artist Sizzla Kalonji

KERWIN PIERRE

Reg­gae artiste Siz­zla has pub­licly re­fut­ed claims that he de­mand­ed pay­ment equal to an­oth­er per­former—who failed to ap­pear—in or­der to close the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val. He de­scribed the al­le­ga­tion as a “bla­tant lie”.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the Ja­maican en­ter­tain­er clar­i­fied that dur­ing a meet­ing with the event’s pro­mot­er—who had not yet paid the 50% de­posit out­lined in their agree­ment—he mere­ly sug­gest­ed that the un­paid sum could be cov­ered us­ing the funds in­tend­ed for the ab­sent head­lin­er.

“We sim­ply said to the pro­mot­er in a meet­ing, when he still didn’t of­fer to pay us the 50% of our orig­i­nal con­trac­tu­al amount, that he should pay us the 50% that he was go­ing to pay the artiste that was to head­line the show and didn’t ap­pear, and I will head­line the show,” he wrote.

Siz­zla re­vealed that al­though the con­tract stip­u­lat­ed a 50% ad­vance, he had al­ready per­formed at the event af­ter re­ceiv­ing on­ly 10% of the agreed fee.

“This is not ac­cept­able—all be­cause of Trinidad—and you still didn’t give us the 50% owed to us, even up­on my ar­rival at the ho­tel,” he said.

De­spite the con­trac­tu­al is­sues, he ac­knowl­edged the ef­forts of the fes­ti­val’s or­gan­is­ers.

“I gen­uine­ly think the pro­mot­er and spon­sors did a very good job; it’s just that the head­lin­er didn’t ap­pear.”

He al­so not­ed that he and his team wait­ed at the ho­tel for hours fol­low­ing the meet­ing, ex­pect­ing a res­o­lu­tion that nev­er came.

“The pro­mot­er didn’t get back to us the whole night—we wait­ed and wait­ed, and noth­ing hap­pened. I fell asleep.”

Even if he had been will­ing to per­form with­out re­ceiv­ing the out­stand­ing bal­ance, Siz­zla said the pro­mot­er failed to fol­low up with him.

Nonethe­less, he end­ed on a pos­i­tive note.

“I went to the stu­dio and com­piled my al­bum with some very tal­ent­ed lo­cal acts. We’re mov­ing on. We love Trinidad. One love Trinidad.”


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