Grammy Award Winner Ricky Kej Calls Trevor Noah 'Irresponsible'; Schools Him Over His Remarks On Cancelled Show

Comedian and TV show host Trevor Noah has left his Indian fans disappointed. During his recent Mumbai show, Noah was seen allegedly mocking the cancelled Bengaluru show when he even complained a lot about the city. He claimed that the backstage area was ‘full of dogs’ and went on to say that the event room wasn’t designed for Human Beings. This has left Noah’s Indian audiences furious. Now, three times Grammy Awards winner Ricky Kej has schooled the comedian for not carrying out thorough checks.

Reacting to Trevor Noah’s gratitude post on X(formerly Twitter), in which the comedian expressed gratitude towards India, Ricky Kej wrote, “While I do agree that there were many Event Management related problems in the Bengaluru show for @Trevornoah .. there is something known as a “Soundcheck” and “Venue recce” that every responsible and caring artist caries out before a show. If Trevor Noah really bothered about his ticket purchasing fans, then he would have made it a point to arrive earlier in the day (or previous night) and personally carried out a reconnaissance of the venue, tested out his microphone and ensured that the sound was optimum. I am sure he does that at other prestigious venues all over the world, and I am shocked to realize he did not bother to do this in Bengaluru.”

Further lashing out at Trevor, Ricky continued, “This is the artists responsibility. Every artist/comedian/band has personal sound requirements and preferences.. and to just show up for the event, without even checking your sound is hugely irresponsible. It was the audience that got punished in the process.. audiences that paid money and travelled to experience him. If Trevor wanted screens as he mentioned in his Mumbai rant, then he should have asked for them, given specifications. If he wanted a specific venue, he should have asked for it.”

“When Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Beyonce, Black Eyed Peas, Iron Maiden, Bryan Adams, Metallica, Symphony Orchestras, Russel Peters, etc. have had super successful events in Bengaluru, why is Bengaluru being trashed now? YANNI had performed in the EXACT SAME VENUE in 2014.. and the sound and experience was fantastic, because Yanni worked with everyone involved to deliver a spectacular concert. Yanni cared about his fans. Trevor also attributed this incident to “India” as a whole, which is in very bad taste. This is definitely a case of terrible event management, but more importantly a very complacent and irresponsible artist with a complete disregard for his paying fans (and India).. who blames everyone and everything but himself,” continued Ricky.

Explaining the science behind the sound system apparatus during live shows, Ricky explained,

“The way sound systems work is, the people who are within the sound field of the speakers get great sound quality. The people who are outside hear the reverberation, or sound bouncing off the walls.. and so words spoken are not clearly intelligible. There are ways to correct this, if Trevor and his team had bothered to work with the organizers. Trevor implying that the audience was classist citing that the front row only cared about themselves is an insult and completely uncalled for. The people who are seated within the “optimum range of the soundsystem” sometimes find it hard to believe that this is not the case throughout the audience. So the people in front may not have understood why the people at the back were complaining. To imply they were classist and to attribute this as something he has “learnt about India” is absolutely uncalled for. Trevor seems to have a general bias against India.

For the unversed, Trevor Noah was supposed to perform in Bengaluru on September 27 and 28 as a part of his Off The Record Tour. However, the shows were cancelled at the last moment due to ‘technical issues’. Complaining about the same, Noah said during his Mumbai show, “Now, usually when I go to do a show backstage what happens is there will be like an entrance that you walk into and then you’re in the venue and then you emerge into a backstage area before you come and perform. Here (in the Bengaluru venue), we walk through an alley that was full of dogs — half of which were in cages… I’ve never prepared for a show where the backstage area is dogs in cages.”

“Then we get to this ‘venue.’ The room was essentially like a semi-permanent tent and then everyone was seated in the room with no screens and there were giant air-conditioners outside which were blowing hot air,” he added.

“They tried to turn the sound up so that you can hear what is happening. But, because the room wasn’t designed for human beings, what happens is the sound waves are now just bouncing around the room in every direction,” he further said.