Jensen La Vende and

Carisa Lee

Mu­sic man­ag­er and con­sul­tant at Di­Me­dia TT, Deli­cia Pat­ter­son, be­lieves young peo­ple who take Trini­bad mu­sic lit­er­al­ly are deal­ing with deep­er is­sues.

“I would try to get in­to their brain be­cause I be­lieve it is a psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lem, me be­ing some­body who used to lis­ten to these types of mu­sic be­fore and nev­er act on it, it is a mind­set thing,” Pat­ter­son said yes­ter­day.

She shared her view on the is­sue af­ter Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­vised par­ents to take a look at the Trini­bad con­tent their chil­dren con­sume.

“That mu­sic is like an an­them and like a mantra,” the min­is­ter said.

Pat­ter­son, who has worked with artistes such as Akeibah “2K Zelle” Shep­pard, Llano “Jahllano” Grant and Kern “Trinidad Kil­la” Joseph, said she would first try to un­der­stand the back­grounds and cir­cum­stances of the youths in­volved and ad­vise them based on that in­for­ma­tion.

“I know if bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties and plat­forms are pro­vid­ed, these youths will be less in­clined and they will have sup­port and guid­ance to make bet­ter de­ci­sions,” she said.

Gospel artiste Jaron Nurse agreed with Gads­by-Dol­ly that some young peo­ple are con­sumed by the vi­o­lence some Trini­bad songs pro­mote.

“I be­lieve a lot of the youths are giv­ing to these lyrics, to these songs and it’s very ev­i­dent be­cause even some of the artistes are not here with us to­day be­cause again the mes­sage that they preach­ing, they al­so liv­ing it,” he said.

Nurse said one so­lu­tion would be to pe­nalise those who use the pow­er of the mi­cro­phone for neg­a­tiv­i­ty.

The singer said he’s friends with many of the Trini­bad artistes who claim “they don’t make mon­ey singing pos­i­tive mu­sic,” or that they’re just “giv­ing the youths what they know”.

Trini­bad artiste Rheon El­bourne said the vi­o­lent lyri­cal con­tent in the mu­sic will dis­si­pate if artistes are giv­en the right back­ing.

El­bourne, who is con­sid­ered one of the pos­i­tive singers in the genre, ex­plained that he recog­nised the pow­er of his mu­sic when An­gos­tu­ra part­nered with him. With that part­ner­ship, he said he aimed to en­sure that he and An­gos­tu­ra were pre­sent­ed in a light that al­lowed for more op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“I didn’t want to sing any­thing that was gang af­fil­i­at­ed to jeop­ar­dise me work­ing with this com­pa­ny,” he said.

El­bourne ad­mit­ted some of the artistes get sup­port from “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers”.

“If cor­po­rate Trinidad and the Gov­ern­ment don’t re­al­ly come in to play and make the plat­forms for these artistes, then we will take the plat­form wher­ev­er we get it be­cause we need bread and but­ter and we’re still try­ing to ex­press our­selves.”

Con­cerns have been in­creas­ing about the neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of Trini­bad mu­sic, with the au­thor­i­ties in some Caribbean is­lands ban­ning artistes from per­form­ing.

The Roy­al St Christo­pher (St Kitts) and Nevis Po­lice Force re­cent­ly banned 23-year-old Kashief “Kman Sixx’’ Sankar from en­ter­ing that is­land based on a com­pre­hen­sive se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ment. Sankar was al­so banned from per­form­ing at Grena­da’s Our Fete on Feb­ru­ary 6. On Feb­ru­ary 5, Sankar was charged with two gang-re­lat­ed of­fences and is cur­rent­ly on $40,000 bail.

Mean­while, pro­duc­ers An­je­lo “Chady Beats” Noel and Asim Fal­tine ad­mit­ted that the cur­rent Trini­bad cul­ture was hurt­ing artistes fi­nan­cial­ly. Apart from the gun vi­o­lence not mak­ing sense, Noel said it is not mak­ing dol­lars ei­ther.

“Gun­man mu­sic on stream­ing plat­forms does not make mon­ey. If you sing a re­al­i­ty song or a girl’s tune, that will make more mon­ey than the gun­man song but these artistes fol­low­ing trends. If Sixx sings a gun­man tune then Sev­en will sing one too, so them fel­las just spin­ning top in mud. They just fol­low­ing each oth­er,” he said.

Fal­tine said with­out the nec­es­sary sup­port, young peo­ple will turn to what they see and know, which is crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, so the Gov­ern­ment needs to cre­ate more av­enues for the tal­ent­ed youth to show­case them­selves.

“It have peo­ple who here in Trinidad who know about mu­sic who could di­rect the youths dif­fer­ent­ly but they don’t. They don’t come down to ground, some get big and they don’t come down to ground. Don’t study the type of mu­sic they singing, it’s not them, it’s be­yond them,” he said.

Genre’s death toll

Last De­cem­ber, Dami­an Kriss, 26, his broth­er, Levi Kriss, 31, and Jer­ry Hollingsworth, 31, all part of Sankar’s en­tourage were killed when gun­men opened fire on the car they were in on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way. Po­lice said Sankar was the killers’ tar­get.

It was the sec­ond time Sankar was the vic­tim of a gun at­tack that left those around him dead or in­jured. Last Oc­to­ber, ­Kaveer “DJ Glob­al” Nan­dram was killed when gun­men went af­ter Sankar in Wood­brook.

Be­tween Ju­ly 2020 and Au­gust 2022, N’Kosi “Fari Dan” Bovell, Carl­ton “CJ Dan” Camp­bell, “Daniel Mad Dog” Hamil­ton, Keenan “Craig­man” Craig and Kyle “Rebel Sixx” George were all killed in what po­lice said were gang re­lat­ed mur­ders.

Josi­ah “Siah Boss” Mc­Clatchie and Ja­heim “Chucky Blan­co” Joseph were killed by the po­lice in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in 2021.

Gun­men at­tempt­ed to kill Tyrell “Prince Swan­ny” Swan twice. He has since sought asy­lum in the US.

In 2022, 25-year-old Brid­get James, the girl­friend of Trini­bad singer Kalon­ji “Kalon­ji” Arthur, was killed when gun­men opened fire on the cou­ple out­side at The Brix Ho­tel in Cas­cade.

In May last year An­to­nio “Wacko Dan” Reyes, 22 was shot dead in St Ann’s af­ter he sang a song “dis­re­spect­ing” an al­leged gang­ster.