Dear Editor,
I SAW on most of our TV stations that the dance hall singer Alkaline is coming to Guyana to sing. These TV promoters are promoting this Jamaica singer as if he is some sort of messiah coming to Guyana to create a revival for our nation.I am no fan of Alkaline and many of his contemporaries, but I can differentiate what is a song from ”loud cussing” on a video. I took some time to listen to Alkaline’s songs; in his songs he used the F words and tons of expletives and profanities. For example, his famous songs are ”Fleek, Wining down, Ride on Me. Side Gyal, One more time, City and a long list of songs loaded with cuss words degrading women. In his music video “Fleek,” he has tons of cash in his hands as he smoked drugs and has a woman practically naked wining up on a pole. In the music video ‘Side Gyal” he and a girl are having sex explicitly and he sings his sex song to her explicitly, depicting sex in a real immoral manner. He starts his next music video ”City” with tons of F words.
My concerns about this Jamaican Dance Hall singer are many. Why would promoters want to bring this singer to our country? Who is responsible for bringing him? Are they aware of what he sings? The facts are clear that his songs have already destroyed thousands of young people in this nation; so why bring him here? It’s no wonder we have so many criminals in our society, because they try to imitate the big lifestyles of these singers so they have to kill and rob innocent citizens to fuel their drug abuse and perverted lifestyles. The lyrics of his songs are obnoxious and very degrading to women and young people.
A very careful view of these music videos is musical pornography invading our society, but we somehow are not seeing it. I am calling on the Hon Minister of Public Security and The Hon Minister of Education and The Hon Minister of State to ban Alkaline from coming to perform here. We must also remember that Kartel is currently serving a prison sentence in Jamaica for murder. Our government should ban all the songs of these dance hall singers to enter Guyana to create a clean society. I challenge our ministers, including our President and Prime Minister to listen to Alkaline’s songs. I bet they won’t hear them for five minutes. Our young people have fallen morally, spiritually and academically, because of all the filthy music entering our nation.
I have taken time off to view some of the shows which are replayed on TV. What I have seen and listened to are very immoral and disturbing to my soul. Songs from the Trinidad group by the Hit Man and our own Terry Gajraj and Adrian Dutchin promote rum-drinking, and we are fully aware that rum is the cause of family break-ups and domestic violence in our society. Many of these songs have sexual overtones, and promote violence against women; yet they are given a stage in Guyana. Some of our own singers join them by singing songs that promote vulgarity of the highest nature. Another song I viewed is called ‘All Night’; the message of the song really promotes sex, but does that really help our nation while we battle against AIDS?

Are these singers and entertainers really helping our nation morally? Are they helping our young people spiritually and academically? While some of our singers and artistes are very talented, they can do better by singing cleaner songs with meaning like those of Bob Marley and Eddy Grant. I also observed that lots of singers today are performing in very scantily dressed style, from Lady Ga Ga, Britney Spears, Niki Minaj, Beyonce, Madonna, and including many of our own singers. Most of the females in these music videos are in their underwear gyrating and ‘wining.’ We have fallen from grace as a nation in this fast-moving world of lawless and ignorant singers, who became millionaires by promoting sex in their songs because sex sells in various forms.
It seems to me that those who are bringing Alkaline here don’t care about the harm they are doing to this nation, but their major concern is to make money. God admonishes us in the Holy Scriptures that: ”For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1Timothy 6:10
I discover that people in this world can do anything for money, even if many people have to die for them to get rich. William Shakespeare wrote:
”If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
What is the Ministry of Culture doing about these shows that are invading our country? Can we really define our culture, or do we have what it takes to comprehend the meaning of the word “culture”?
We also need to take another look at the vulgarity of Mashramani and ask ourselves if these events are helping the moral and intellectual fabric of our society. It’s about time our citizens stop supporting these shows because these entertainers are getting rich from our nation, which is poor. We can only value our nation by what we have produced and achieved over the years, and we have not arrived as yet. As VS Naipaul wrote:  “We have produced nothing in the Caribbean.”  What we have produced are Carnival and vile music that gives us more poverty, illiteracy, immorality and misery.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil