Dawn Ritch, Columnist

By what means a performer who usually sings at Carnegie Hall or the Royal Albert Hall came to sing in a cow pasture in Jamaica, we may never know, nor why. But the fact remains that she was booed.

Diana Ross is entertainment royalty. If Jamaicans want to save their money to pay many thousands of dollars each to see her without them getting even so much as a chair to sit on, that's their business. But it seems a little unreasonable to abuse her because she didn't want her image portrayed on mega screens throughout the park.

The problem was that the sound was also carried by these giant screens. The promoter didn't say a thing about her requirement until just before the diva took the stage. Diana Ross sang for an hour, and she was booed after every number. I understand that even some of those who could hear her well booed her all the same because they had always wanted to do so. They say they welcomed the opportunity to boo someone who had been so "facety" all her life.

Even some of those in the VIP boxes were happy to misbehave. Officials of the Jamaican Government who were present were also in total sympathy with the crowd. So I doubt that anyone of them sent her a note of apology the following morning. Nor do I expect that one came from the promoter, who was certainly responsible for misleading the crowd, if not the diva herself.

Diana Ross is over 60, and has put on a little weight. Whatever the reason, she didn't want her image or close-ups on a mega screen. It's her image and it's her reason.

She did what she was paid to do, which was come and sing. The audience got four changes of outfits in an hour-long performance, a fact which does not suggest that she felt contemptuous towards her audience.

Packed in tight

It is a real shame that the venue was oversold. I understand that if you even wanted to visit your friend, you had to stay put. The people were packed in tighter than a sardine can. Joan Williams, one of the more current occasional talk-show hosts in Jamaica, wrote an excellent letter to another newspaper on the subject. She said: "While the police were very efficient in searching people as they entered and in keeping the traffic moving, during the performances they basically remained in clusters at the back instead of moving around to ensure that all was well, and even more important, that the walkways were kept free."

All was not well where she was sitting, the walkways were not free, and a female patron was assaulted by a man, presumably because he felt like it. The policewoman decided she should get her supervisor to deal with it, all of which convinces me that the police were really there to enjoy the show without having to pay for it.

What manner of event promotion is this? Is Miss Ross supposed to be grateful that the audience was not the typical Sting crowd? Glad that they did not resort to rockstones and other missiles, and tear out her weave?

As Williams herself noted: "Diana Ross has been on the music scene for some 40 years and her idiosyncrasies are well known. The promoters should, therefore, have ensured that the 'Ts' were crossed and the 'Is' dotted to ensure that the public got what we paid for. My friends and I were fortunate to go early and establish ourselves up front, and we saw the entire performance, which was excellent. I was, therefore, sorry for her, because after each rendition she was booed. Naturally it did get to her."

I called Joan to ask how she knew it "got to her", because the letter did not say. She said that after every number, when the booing started, Diana Ross had a slight expression on her face that said "What the hell?!"

If that's all anyone saw of Ross' reaction, she not only deserved every penny she was paid for the performance, but every accolade on the quality of her divaship. Any other celebrity might have thrown a bucket of water over the speakers. These days, it's not the class of the act that matters, but the decibel level of it. She was throwing pearls before swine.

Play wid puppy ...

This is someone who probably has more number one hits than any other performer on the face of the planet. I doubt she was on the telephone pleading with the promoters of the Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival to let her join the line-up of artistes. Furthermore, I doubt they could have got the turnout in the tens of thousands that they did, had she not agreed to be the headline artiste on the final night. Now it's a case of play wid puppy, puppy lick yuh mout.

I hear a lot of nonsense about her being "disengaged" from the Jamaican audience. Those at the front of the venue didn't think so. They, I'm told, even asked for an encore, but she was out of there like a rocket.

Who can blame her? The answer is easy. Many of the patrons apparently value creativity in the same way they do a chicken. As this newspaper reported from an irate member of the audience who couldn't hear, she'd come for leg and thigh and been given chicken back.

Whose fault was that? Surely not, Miss Ross'. She did what she was paid to do. It was the promoter who did not deliver the goods. At an event of that size, there should be no eleventh-hour requests by a diva which work to the detriment of the audience, only to that of the promoter. In this case, she got her money, the promoter got his money, and the audience went home feeling short-changed. It was the artiste herself who had to suffer the ignominy of being insulted over and over again in a cow pasture. Nobody goes through that either willingly or gladly.

Diana Ross need not feel singled out for special humiliation. Several years ago, when the late Luciano Pavarotti performed at King's House, nobody heard a note of it. Members of the audience were too busy all night long chattering on their cellphones. They were calling every friend and acquaintance they knew to boast that they were listening to Pavarotti sing on the lawns of King's House.

Nevertheless, the promoter and producer of the Air Jamaica Jazz Festival, Walter Elmore of TurnKey Productions, has a lot of explaining to do. The Jazz Festival began at Cinnamon Hill, and then it went to this place called the Aqueduct, and which I call a cow pasture.

One thing is sure, and it is that the new venue is many, many times bigger than the old one.

The fiasco of the final night demonstrates, however, that this strategy may have reached the point of diminishing returns as far as the audience is concerned.