The Jamaican music industry has always been a law unto itself. It makes stars of people who wouldn’t get past a record company reception desk elsewhere: the cross-eyed, toothless DJ King Stitt, the eccentric producer Glen Brown, famed for releasing singles with the wrong labels deliberately attached.
So it stands to reason that it should produce a feud that dwarfs all others: one that involves both the prime minister and the country’s most famous Olympian, Usain Bolt.
Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur’s war of words may have sold more records, but former US president Bill Clinton didn’t convene a meeting involving four government ministers and a bishop. Blur and Oasis may have made the evening news, but at least Steve Redgrave managed to stay out of it.
The argument is between dancehall stars Vybz Kartel and Mavado. Kartel claims to have had sex with Mavado’s mother and once carried a coffin with his rival’s name on it onstage. Mavado claims Kartel is a closet homosexual, has had his skin bleached and doesn’t believe in God — the latter a serious slur in a country with more churches per capita than anywhere else on Earth.
But what sets Kartel and Mavado’s feud apart is that it is linked to two different neighborhoods — the Kingston neighborhood, known as Gully, where Mavado was born, and an area of Portmore nicknamed “Gaza” by its most famous inhabitant, Kartel. Some say the row is linked to Jamaica’s warring political parties: Gaza supports the People’s National Party, Gully the Jamaica Labour Party. Others say the feud has been stoked by a music industry suffering a slump in sales.
Whatever the reason, it is being blamed for fights in dancehalls, attacks on tourists and violence in prisons and schools. Usain Bolt is said to have decreed that no Gully music be played at his post-Olympic homecoming party. Finally, back in December, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding called for a meeting with both artists to broker a truce.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not