THE March of Three Kings concert headlined by Mavado, Elephant Man and Wayne Marshall was marred by gunfire which caused a stampede from Margaritaville in Ocho Rios on Saturday night .

“A music and love wi seh,” shouted Mavado in the parking lot at around 4.35 am to the shaken departing crowd.

Three minutes earlier three gunshots rang from just outside the venue. It resulted in scores of patrons taking cover behind trees, cars and bodies. This was preceded by shouts of “fight, fight, gun!”. In total the crowd sought cover three times in an attempt to exit the parking lot. It wasn’t immediately clear who fired the shots.

Prior to the stampede, the crowd’s initial focus was on a bleeding man, possibly intoxicated, of unsound mind, or both, lying in the parking lot. “Him get hit by a car,” stated one patron.

Unresponsive calls to him resulted in the thickening of the crowd and honking horns. Then came the shots.

During the concert, the sound selectors, Elephant Man and Mavado all voiced expressions of violence as a means to rev-up the thick crowd. The favourite target of the selectors and Elephant Man were gays whilst Mavado lyrically attacked his nameless enemies. Wayne Marshall kept his set clean. “We nah kill no fish. We just saying we nah switch non at all,” he stated in reference to gays.

Despite the gunshots and the abundance of lyrical violence, the show contained colourful performances including comedic skits by Elephant Man. He invited a fat woman on stage, whom he described as a female elephant, and did his usual antics — throwing her in the air stopping in mid-air to ‘bus a wine’.

In performance Mavado rarely sang the choruses of his songs. He relied on the introduction many times only to elicit crowd whistles and verbal gun salutes. “Dash weh that,” he constantly told the selector indicating his need for the next track.

It took him 12 songs before he would sing a full song.

A maximum of three lines was given to each preceding song and many subsequent songs. It indicated his heavy reliance on allusion as a performance style. It’s not surprising that Real Killer speaks to this very issue of defeating a rival with “no chorus”.

His 30-minute set included five themes of songs about guns, girls, gully, God and ganja.

The 25-song list included Weh Dem A Do, Real Killer, Hope and Pray, Real McKoy, Dem a Gangsta, Amazing Grace, Gully Side, Don’t Worry, No Fraid a Dem, Gal over Gun, When You Feel Lonely (Tek off You Panty), Gyal A Mad Ova (Nova Scotia), Stulla (Long Distance), Tump her Up, I Know You Want Me, Give Her Everything, 9 Lives (God of Peace), The Messiah, Jah Is Coming Soon, Star Bwoy, Give you My Everything, This Life and All Dem a Talk.