NEW YORK (JIS), January 16, 2008 - ZYNC-TV, an emerging media unit on the Caribbean New York landscape will attempt an ambitious examination of the boundaries of free speech in today’s popular music culture at a specially arranged forum at the Grand army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (Eastern Parkway/Flatbush Avenue), in central Brooklyn, NY, on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 5:30 pm.
Influenced by worldwide lifestyle changes and trends within the last five to ten years, pop culture practitioners in a number of genres have come under increasing scrutiny and pressure as it relaters to lyrical content dubbed inappropriate, politically incorrect, racist, disrespectful or promoting violence against targeted communities of civil society.
“A number of today’s artistes are beginning to feel the pressure of censorship because their lyrics speak out against certain lifestyles and concert promoters now run the risk of having to cancel events or make considerable adjustments to their line-ups for fear of boycott, demonstration and rejection,” opines Eion Saunders, co-producer of ZYNC TV and the forum’s convenor.
The forum will draw on a number of key resource persons and personalities from the music industry, academia and the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual & Transgender (GLBT) communities to score the discourse.
Saunders told JIS/NY News that while the historical and social context of homosexuality in Jamaican culture will be discussed, the panelists will tackle such vexing issues as the double-standard involved in banning reggae artistes – in particular – and race.
The round table panel will include; Poet/Activist Stacey-Ann Chin (GLBT); Sirius Satellite Radio Programme Coordinator, Pat McKay; Professor of Caribbean Literature, Kelly Baker Josephs; Irie Jam Radio host Roy ‘DJ Roy’ Walters; Donald Powell, Executive Director of the anti-Discrimination Project at Gay Men of African Descent; Stan Evan Smith, Journalist/Co-host of Reggae Roundtable-WBAI Radio and D’Niscio Brooks, Promoter-Reggae Carifest, NY.
ZYNC-TV will video-tape the forum which will be developed as an special “edu-taining series of programmes” for its weekly half hour show which airs on NYC Channel 73 on Sundays at 12:30 pm, as part of the popular CIN telecast.