by Tracey Bowers-Lee
Photo credit Dr. Jay Facebook, at his last event at Rebel nightclub in Toronto, before the pandemic shutdown.
Many industries are adjusting to the COVID-19 lockdown, and the music industry is no exception. Many concert venues, clubs, musicians, engineers, photographers, and DJs
ave all been affected during this time.
Within the first few days of the pandemic’s restrictions being implemented, Toronto’s DJ, Dr. Jay de Soca Prince was trying to figure out whether he should pull the plug on his next event.
I spoke with him about the future of his industry and the alternatives he must consider as he looks ahead.
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How has the pandemic affected you?
I mean, just as everybody, it's affected me greatly. No work, no income. It's something that is beyond my wildest expectation. I could never have anticipated that this is what could have taken place when the year started.
You know, because I do events not only in Toronto, we do it in different carnivals around the world and to see everything, everywhere affected and effectively shut down, it's something where, yeah, it's definitely affected me.
Luckily for me, my wife is working from home and she's a very organized person. I think that has helped. What she does for a living is academic-based, so that has helped with a lot of rules and structure where my youngest son is concerned. So, I find the home life is cool and to be honest, I just take it day by day because, for me, that is what has helped me, you know, keep me sane in all of this and all the uncertainty.
Tell me about when you realized the magnitude of the pandemic.
I mean, I guess similar to what a lot of people have seen or heard. We saw what was happening in Wuhan, China. When reading about it you're thinking, it's isolated. You're reading what is happening and still to be honest like, I'm trying to make sense out of nonsense…We come back from Trinidad Carnival. Usually a week or two weeks after Carnival is when I plan this big event. We have some of the top artists who had performed in Trinidad, who’ve had some of the biggest songs, we have them come to Toronto, perform at REBEL, which is one of the biggest nightclubs in North America. It's an annual event and usually sold out.
Everybody loves it. I think it was maybe the Tuesday or Wednesday when it started…you know, that the news really started to come in a lot quicker and I started getting questions from the Wednesday to the Thursday. The event is Friday and I'm getting questions like, ‘Jay are we still doing the events?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, why wouldn't we do the event?’
They haven't ordered any shutdowns of clubs or anything like that and that Thursday I believe it was, I came up with a statement saying, ‘You know what? If you don't feel comfortable coming, you can get your money back but the artists are still here.’ You know, because we had flown everybody in from the Wednesday to the Thursday. Everybody's here, hotel flights, everybody's been paid…Then that Friday is when I think it was the Ministry of Health came up with a recommendation that you shouldn't have over the 250 or 500 people gathered in one space. But again, it wasn't, you know, an official mandate.
When I spoke to the management and ownership at REBEL, it became, ‘Well, you know what? We're opening all weekend until they tell us officially you can't open. We're still going to be open for business.’
So, I felt still confident that we can still do the event and we just leave it up to people. So, it's as you said, it's almost like a self-policing thing, right? If you don't feel comfortable, you don't have to come…Then as we get closer, it was like, it seemed like every hour on the hour, there's more news coming in and it's something where, for me personally, I just didn't feel comfortable doing the event and putting anybody at risk. From the artists to my family to patrons that have supported me over the years. It just wasn't enough to say, ‘We'll just let you self-police with all the news that was coming out.’
…We just said, ‘You know what? It's officially cancelled. Everybody will get their money back.’ And we did it at that and it was something where I had to sit in the dark for a little bit to just kind of let it all organized, and I had to apologize to the artists and you know, we flew in DJs, artists and all kinds of stuff. So it was, it was a lot. But, you know, looking back, we made the right decision.
How do you process something like that?
Honestly, if I overthink it, I'll drive myself crazy and I can't do that to my family. It's something where I can't bring that type of energy into the home. So, I'm just really truly like, it sounds very cliché. If I start to overthink, you know, what could possibly happen, where it could be the entire year gone…I can't even fathom. I can't even process that right now.
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