The ongoing battle between Konpa stars T-Vice and Sweet Micky is supposed to be in the name of good, clean fun, but is it really? For years now these two bands have been at each other's throats "dissing" each other on record and making response records.

Although we can't seem to find out exactly how this started, it reached it's height with the "Gason Makomè" track on T-Vice's Medikaman album. On this song, although they don't say so directly, they accuse Sweet Micky of being a 'gason makomè', which loosely translated can mean mama's boy, very effeminate male, or an out right homosexual.

Sweet Micky retaliated by bashing T-Vice's entire entourage. On Sweet Mickey's latest album cover (and in his Kanaval video), he seizes the opportunity and dresses in drag and jabs back at T-Vice. It's as though he's saying he can look and dress like a gason makomè, and still be better than them!

Throughout the tracks of both groups, they can be heard accusing each other of everything from plagiarism, hypocrisy and lousy musicianship, to being poor dancers. The whole thing only gets more intense during Kanaval when, to the delight of the crowds, the groups spend most of their time taking jabs at each other from their huge floats.

Although childish, the whole thing is usually very humorous and entertaining since they rarely identify each other by name (but everyone knows who they're talking about!) Occasionally another group will try to get into the mix by releasing a song of their own and making trivial accusations. None has been successful in being taken seriously by Konpa lovers who still consider the official battle between T-Vice and Sweet Micky only.

With rumors of fights at clubs (in Haiti, the US and Canada) and a possible sabotage attempt (T-Vice's generator failed during the Eastern Parkway Labor Day parade in Brooklyn. Some people think it was tampered with) one wonders how serious all of this really is (and why it's happening in the first place.) Is this pure fun, or is it more serious? Is it a reflection of Haitian politics where factions of the government all too often do not get along due to petty differences, or is it a clever marketing scheme designed to get people to buy more records?

Whenever I hear the records at clubs, I'm reminded of the battles that Hip-Hop rappers and DJs used to have back in the early 80s. Just like those battles, these will hopefully disappear without a whimper and become mere memories of an era of Konpa music.

Paul Jn-Baptiste
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