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Monday, August 18, 2025

Blaxx, Gyal Owner and International Women's Day

by

Guardina Media
2355 days ago
20190307
Aiyegoro Ome

Aiyegoro Ome

Allan Ganpat

Aiye­goro Ome

Greet­ings to all women on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD). The cam­paign theme, “Bal­ance for Bet­ter” shall con­tin­ue through­out this year. The web­site for IWD ex­plains ‘Col­lec­tive ac­tion and shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for dri­ving a gen­der-bal­anced world is key. In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day is a glob­al day cel­e­brat­ing the so­cial, eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal achieve­ments of women—while al­so mark­ing a call to ac­tion for ac­cel­er­at­ing gen­der bal­ance’.

There will be events world­wide and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T as well as a num­ber of or­gan­i­sa­tions will host lo­cal ac­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, I want to re­fer to a de­cep­tive­ly sweet so­ca hit, Gyal Own­er that has some rel­e­vance to IWD. It is sung by Blaxx (Dex­ter Stew­art) and com­posed joint­ly by Blaxx, Je­vaughn John, and Ja­son Jame­son, us­ing the Tight Squeeze rhythm. The com­posers cer­tain­ly did not arrange the song to be in line with the theme but the co­in­ci­dence is note­wor­thy.

Blaxx is con­cerned with the best qual­i­ty for so­ca com­po­si­tions. In 2012 dur­ing a T&T Guardian in­ter­view with Cherisse Moe, he ap­pealed to his fel­low en­ter­tain­ers to be­come more "lyri­cal­ly con­scious" which, to me, does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the same thing as be­ing "so­cial­ly con­scious". Blaxx’s reper­toire has songs like No Get­away (2012), Leh Go (2013), Place in Life (2015), Life over Death (2017), Hulk (2018), and this year’s Gyal Own­er.

To be fair, oth­er so­ca artistes like Na­dia Bat­son, Farmer Nap­py (Dar­ryl Hen­ry) and Kes Di­ef­fen­thaller, have reper­toires which con­tain fes­tive songs with cred­itable so­cial val­ue.

In Gyal Own­er Blaxx warns a young man, at a par­ty, about the con­se­quences of pos­ses­sive­ness.

Some boy go lose their gyal tonight

Some body go touch it for you

(Some­body go touch it)

You can hold she close if you want to

(Hold she close if you want to)

She will give it to who she want to

(Give it to who she want to)

You can buy her drinks if you want to

(Buy she drinks if you want to)

She go give it to who she want to

(My youth you don’t own it)

To make the young man face re­al­i­ty he mis­chie­vous­ly hits him two lash­es. He is not the Black Pan­ther and should be like his fa­ther be­fore him.

Stop gwan like a su­per­hero like the

Black Pan­ther in Wakan­da

Don’t care if a next man jam on her

Take ex­am­ple from your fa­ther na

He nev­er kill you step­fa­ther na

(cause he know that)

Blaxx is draw­ing on the essence of un­der­stand­ing the need for bal­ance in re­la­tion­ships. It has to do with re­spect for bound­aries in af­fairs be­tween men and women. There is a class of mod­ern women who refuse to be locked in­to in­hibit­ing sit­u­a­tions. These women are a chal­lenge to pos­ses­sive men who will make er­rors when women want the free­dom to be.

He makes it clear:

She give you a touch ah the thing

Yuh feel you is a king

Now yuh buy she ah ring

And just as yuh buy she ah ring

Yuh feel that you con­trol the thing

Then Blaxx of­fers a very prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion which can bring some bal­ance and har­mo­ny to the sit­u­a­tion. He coun­sels the young man to just walk away. In a sense, he is steer­ing him away from what could be­come a tox­ic re­la­tion­ship.

No gyal don’t want no own­er

Don’t want no own­er

Yuh wasn’t born a twin find a

next one quick

To me, that should be the end of that. But the point is that what Blaxx has sung about may have been lost be­cause Gyal Own­er was a very pop­u­lar song dur­ing many of the re­cent Car­ni­val fetes. The un­for­tu­nate as­sump­tion, in some minds, is that Blaxx may be re­fer­ring on­ly to a par­ty en­vi­ron­ment. So when will the mes­sage be heed­ed? Will it be heard dur­ing IWD or ever at all?


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