Yesterday (Wednesday) DJ Roja (mostly likely to his shock) found himself being arrested at around 2am in the morning. A police patrol car drove to Laftaz Comedy Lounge located at Centenary Park and three armed police officers went straight to the deejay box. A few seconds later, DJ Roja who is one of the bar’s resident DJs was seen being taken away by police. The reason was the noise being emitted.
The music being played at the bar was stopped for some time and that’s when everyone sobered up and realised the DJ was being taken away. This left many wondering why he was arrested instead of the bar’s manager.
DJ Roja was surprised too. “When police took me to CPS, I didn’t have anything to explain to them because I am just a DJ and ever since we were told about noise pollution, I have been playing music at an ample volume,” he said.
According to Jonathan Kyeyo, the proprietor of Laftaz Comedy, customers at Hotel Africana have always complained about how they can’t sleep because of the noise coming from Laftaz Comedy which is caused by loud music and people shouting as they sing along to the songs.
“We respected what the hotel said and decided to play music at a respectable volume,” Kyeyo said adding that police has always been interrupting the music played at the bar. To his surprise though, they came in and took DJ Roja away.
The deejay who was taken to Central Police Station was later released after a few hours.
“They didn’t put me in their cells. As I was still explaining to them, Kyeyo came and handled the matter as the bar manager and that’s when they released me,”’ Roja said.
After he left, he went straight to the bar where he took to the DJ box to continue playing music like nothing had happened.
Ever since mid-last year, management of Africana Hotel has been complaining about the noise played at bars around the hotel.
Laftaz Comedy tends to pull big crowds from Monday to Sunday so there has been a focus on it. Ever since they were told, the bar reduced on the volume though sometimes the fans become too much and the volume of the music is increased.