The following is a statement by FAS Promotions and FAS7STAR On Saturday, April 27, Fas7star will host the eagerly anticipated Buju Banton ‘Long Walk to Freedom Tour’ in Barbados at Kensington Oval. This concert will replace the FAS Promotions’ annual Reggae on the Hill, which was originally scheduled for Sunday, April 28, at the Farley Hill National Park. This decision was taken after the initial contract date for Buju Banton was changed from April 6 to April 27, making it impossible for two such large events to be staged on consecutive days with the requirement for back-to-back production. Any inconvenience to patrons is regretted. Nevertheless, the two other signature events of the annual Barbados Reggae Festival will be staged as usual. These are the Reggae Beach Party at Pirate’s Cove on Sunday, April 28, and the Vintage Reggae Show and Dance at the Oval on Tuesday, April 30. Accompanying Buju are three other revered Caribbean acts, Jamaica’s Wayne Wonder and Spragga Benz and Barbados’ Buggy Nhakente. The Magnum Xplosion Reggae Beach Party features Sizzla Kalonji and Busy Signal with top local artistes and DJs. Headlining the Vintage Reggae Show and Dance are Barrington Levy, Cutty Ranks, Mikey Spice, George Nooks and Barbados’ Splash Band and Lil Rick. (PR) Read our ePaper. Fast. Factual. Free. Sign up and stay up to date with Barbados' FREE latest news.<doc-sep>Buju Banton - Official Launch Long Walk To Freedom Tour 01/16/2019 by Reggaeville On March 16, 2019 Buju Banton will return to the stage. His first concert takes place in Kingston, Jamaica at the National Stadium. First Tickets (Early Bird) go on sale this thursday via CARIBTIX.com. More tickets will be available on Friday (January 18, 2019) Tonight (January 16, 2019) the media is invited to the official launch of the Long Walk To Freedom Tour. The media event takes place in Kingston at the Spanish Court Hotel. It was announced, that Buju Banton will not be in attendance. Update: Buju Banton spoke to the fans and media via a video message. [VIDEO ON TOP] ✘ CLICK HERE FOR THE MOST RECENT TOUR SCHEDULE! Here is an overview about the confirmed Buju Banton concerts in 2019 so far: March 16 - Kingston, Jamaica @ National Stadium* March 30 - Nassau, The Bahamas @ Thomas A. Robinson Stadium April 21 - Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago @ Queen's Park Savannah April 27 - Bridgetown, Barbados @ Barbados Reggae Festival May 4 - Suriname @ Andre Kamperveen Stadion May 11 - Grenada @ National Stadium June 26 - 30 Basseterre @ St. Kitts Music Festival *UPDATE: Tickets for Jamaica Official Statement by Buju Banton: With tremendous response from fans worldwide we are aware that both bujubanton.com and Caribtix.com website have crashed. My team is working expeditiously to get the sites back up. TICKETS are still available! Tickets Are NOT SOLD OUT!!!! DO NOT PURCHASE from ANY OTHER Site!! ! Earlier today a video trailer was published to announce the concert in Nassau. Watch below and listen to Buju Banton in person who confirms to be there:<doc-sep>Dancehall and Reggae star Buju Banton is free. Banton, who was convicted in a Tampa courtroom in 2011 on federal drug charges, was freed Friday from Georgia's private McMcRae Correctional Institute, a prison official told the Tampa Bay Times. The 45-year-old music star was to return to his native Jamaica. A video of a man reported to be Banton boarding a plane was published on Twitter on Friday and #freebuju hashtags were all over social media. Born Mark Myrie, he served seven years in federal prison in one of the most high-profile cases tried in the Sam M. Gibbons United States Courthouse in downtown Tampa. The Guardian wrote that Banton would be the "most eagerly awaited arrival in Jamaica since Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie touched down in April 1966." Jamaican officials confirmed to the British newspaper that the artist was expected to return to his native country. The newspaper described Banton as "perhaps the most famous Jamaican artist whose name isn't Marley." Reared in Kingston and nicknamed "Buju" by his mother, he rose to prominence at a young age in the 1990s as one of the premier dancehall artists. He overtook Reggae legend Bob Marley's record for No. 1 singles on the Jamaican charts in 1992, according to the Guardian. But Banton was also the subject of international condemnation for a violently homophobic song that "openly incited the killing of gay people," according to the Guardian. As a result, 28 of his shows were cancelled from 2005 to 2011. In 2007, the newspaper said he vowed to never again incite "hatred or violence." His legal troubles started on a 2009 flight from Spain to the United States. Banton was seated next to an informant who federal agents had paid $3.3 million over 14 years. The prosecution said Banton boasted of his role in a large cocaine smuggling ring, and talked to the informant about setting up a deal. The trial started on Feb. 14, 2011, the day after he won a Grammy for best reggae album, Before the Dawn, recorded before his arrest. At his Tampa trial, federal prosecutors showed the jury audio and video recordings of Banton that they said proved he was involved in the deal to buy 11 pounds of cocaine for $135,000. One video showed the performer tasting cocaine at a Sarasota warehouse on Dec. 8, 2009, though he was not present when the deal was finalized. Banton told the jury that he was just boasting to impress someone who he believed could help his music career. The defense emphasized Banton's musical career, displaying his album covers, telling jurors about his Grammy award and even calling one of Bob Marley's sons to the stand. "This is not about Buju Banton, the reggae singer," a prosecutor told the jury. "This is about Mark Myrie, the drug defendant." In June 2011 he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. During the trial, while Banton was being held in the Pinellas County jail, he wrote this letter to the court: "The days that lie ahead are filled with despair, but I have courage and grace and I'm hopeful, and that is sufficient to carry me through. The man is not dead. Don't call him a ghost." Banton's case and appeals would drag on for years in federal court, however, and even one of the jurors in his 2011 conviction would end up in serious trouble years later. Former juror foreman Terri Wright was found guilty in 2015 of contempt for researching the case outside of court. U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who also presided over the Banton trial, sentenced her to five months of probation, 40 hours of community service and ordered her to research and write a report about the cost of Banton's high-profile trial. Former Miami New Times reporter Chris Sweeney wrote a story in 2012 that suggested Wright ignored the court's order and researched the case on her own. The reporter even testified the juror. Times staff writer Anastasia Dawson contributed to this report, which uses information from Times files and other news organizations.<doc-sep>Reggae star Buju Banton returned to his native Jamaica in early December after serving seven years in a US prison on drug charges. Banton got a hero's welcome, despite his infamous, 1993 anti-gay song “Boom Bye Bye,” which called for the murder of gay people. "Boom Bye Bye" was one of Banton’s first recorded songs about 25 years ago. Since then, he has rejected violence against the LGBTQ community. In June 2007, Banton signed the Reggae Compassionate Act, agreeing “to not make statements or perform songs that incite hatred or violence against anyone from any community.” But Banton still can’t shake off his homophobic reputation, which makes his story complex for many Jamaicans, including Staceyanne Chin, an LGBTQ activist and poet from Jamaica, who now lives in the US. Chin says Banton's legacy is complicated. Chin told The World's Marco Werman she was out shopping near her home in New York when she heard the news about Banton returning to Jamaica. "I was in Ikea in Brooklyn when I first heard Buju was coming home. It was a Jamaican woman who was serving me in IKEA, and she said with such jubilation that he's coming home and in the same breath she said — with such vitriol — that the reason that he was imprisoned in the first place was the hatred of the gay community and international, almost organized way in which they systematically went after him and took him down." Marco Werman: Which is, of course, not true. He served seven years in a US prison for drug trafficking — cocaine. Staceyanne Chin: Absolutely, yes. But there are still people on the ground in Jamaica who feel the only reason that he was behind those bars was that he was being targeted by the gay community, by the very powerful gay community, as we are often described as by the reggae community. Before serving time for drug trafficking in the US, Buju Banton had disavowed violence, I read, physical or musical, toward the gay community. He's served seven years in prison and is now out. How much has he changed from the man who sang “Boom Bye Bye” 25 years ago? I think that's a very complicated question. The optimist in me, the lesbian, Jamaican, activist optimist, the lover of where I'm from ... it's a very complicated place to sit, being more than one identity at the same time, and maybe those two identities don't coexist comfortably. I grew up with reggae music ,and so there's a part of me that really loves it and really answers to it when I hear it. I came out as a lesbian on the university campus in Jamaica and was violently assaulted by a large number of boys who wanted to — their intention must have been to either punish me for being gay or to convert me to being straight. That violence lives with me my whole life. And so the two things inside of me are consistently at war. They are always talking to each other in loud voices, and they are always wrestling on a mat and they are always trying to find a way to live together because it is so much a part of me. I hear all these complicated feelings coming from you about this. It's fascinating. How much do you think his fans are aiding and abetting his life and his celebrity. I mean how much of the blame do they shoulder? Buju is, in every way, a human being just like me, just like you. But he's also extraordinarily talented and extraordinarily able to speak from a place of deep truth about poverty in Jamaica about people's lives. He's able to articulate an experience that has been missing from much of the music we call ours. Not since Bob Marley has there been an artist that speaks with such truth, with such depth, with such beauty about the lives of poor people and the struggle to be recognized as human, for blackness and being from Africa to be the center of one's pleasure and one's power. Remind us what the reception to “Boom Bye Bye” was when it first came out. The first time I heard “Boom Bye Bye,” I threw my hands up and sang along because I was a teenager in Jamaica. I sang with gusto along with my peers to the song. Later, I became aware of the fact that I wanted to partner with women, and it became complicated for me because the song was actually saying "kill gay people, kill gay men, shoot them in the head," which is in no way permissible when you are a person who is gay because you're actually advocating for the death of your own kind, your own person. After the experience in Jamaica where I was attacked by some violent homophobes, I came to the US and started to articulate a politics around micro identity. I began to see how what I went through was not only problematic, but I began to see that I had a right to respond and I could join the fight to speak out against this kind of violence. Do you think homophobes in Jamaica still see “Boom Bye Bye” as kind of an anthem? I heard it referenced many times. “Boom Bye Bye” is a part of the musical lexicon of Jamaica. You can just say “Boom Bye Bye,” and people in Jamaica kind of know what you mean. It's clear what it is that you're saying, what you're referencing. In 2012, when my daughter was born and I took her home and was spending so much time in Jamaica, I saw gay people everywhere. Things have changed dramatically. I've performed at a gay pride parade in Jamaica, there have been marches in Jamaica, gay activists walkabout; there are groups on campus that meet. Things have changed, as they should. I do believe that the conversation around “Boom Bye Bye” and the conversation around the reggae artists helped to make that possible. Are you able to compartmentalize to the point where you've forgiven him for “Boom Bye Bye”?<doc-sep>
On Feb. 13, 2011, Banton’s Before The Dawn (released on his Gargamel Music label) won the best reggae album Grammy. Banton was unable to attend the ceremony: his trial began the following day in Tampa, FL. On Feb. 22, Banton was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense and using communication wires to facilitate a drug-trafficking offense. Four months later Banton was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. The embattled artist was returned home to Jamaica to great fanfare on the evening of Dec. 7, 2018. Short video clips of a bespectacled, slightly heavier, smiling Banton, walking through the corridors of Kingston’s Norman Manley Airport surrounded by well-wishers, were shared across social media. “The energy and support Buju has received from fans and other artists in Jamaica has been amazing, people are happy he’s home and he’s excited to return to performing,” comments Joey Budafuco who is also a part of Banton’s management team. “We are still planning The Long Walk to Freedom (named after Nelson Mandela’s autobiography) concert in Kingston, which will only have three or four opening acts because we want Buju to have ample time for his set.” Banton has also established a nonprofit, the Lend A Hand Foundation, which will assist the needs of at-risk children. “A portion of the proceeds from Buju’s Kingston show will go to his foundation and on his (upcoming) Caribbean dates, we will align with nonprofits in each island, with part proceeds going to those (respective) organizations and Lend A Hand,” Budafuco added. Raised in extremely humble circumstances Buju rose to prominence in the early '90s as a brash, teenage dancehall sensation known for his ferocious, raspy vocal tone. His debut album Mr. Mention (Penthouse Records) broke sales records in Jamaica. Mercury Records A&R Lisa Cortes signed Banton after watching his performance at Jamaica’s Reggae Sunsplash 1992. That same year, Jamaica’s Prime Minister at the time, PJ Patterson, had missed Banton’s Thursday night performance at Sunsplash. When the Patterson entourage arrived on Friday night, a request was sent to singer Beres Hammond, who was on stage at the time, to interrupt his set and let Banton perform. The singer obliged and Banton delivered a few songs including his hit duet with Hammond “Who Say.” The Prime Minister was pleased, the audience ecstatic and Banton became Jamaica’s most talked about artist. Buju’s renown grew internationally with the release of his Mercury Records debut Voice of Jamaica, which, reflective of its title, touched on personal, social, and cultural themes and reached the lower rungs of the Billboard 200, as did Banton’s 1995 masterpiece ‘Til Shiloh. A missive of his newfound Rastafarian way ‘Til Shiloh (for Cortes’ Loose Canon Imprint) brilliantly united dancehall’s energy with roots reggae’s spiritual sensibilities.