A newly formed group is calling for a boycott of Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel over homophobic lyrics by two performers who are scheduled to perform at the Providence nightclub this month.

Voices Against Hate held a press conference yesterday at AIDS Project Rhode Island to call on club owner Rich Lupo to cancel performances by dancehall reggae performers Beenie Man on Monday and Buju Banton Nov. 21.

The group also called for the cancellation of a Beenie Man performance at the Ocean Mist, in Matunuck, scheduled for Wednesday. That show was canceled yesterday afternoon. Club owner Kevin Finnegan cited damage to his club that reduced his capacity, according to Beenie Man and Buju Banton's agent, Peter Schwartz. Finnegan did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Voices Against Hate also called yesterday for Lupo to commit not to book artists they described as those "whose songs call for violence against lesbians and gays." Until then, they encourage people not to patronize the club. "If you had plans to go to Lupo's this weekend," Joe Brummer said yesterday, "perhaps it'd be a good time to change those plans."

Club owner Rich Lupo said yesterday that the group "really ought to think about what they're trying to achieve. I think it's sincere, but I don't think that it's right. I agree with their cause, but . . . I think that in the 1980s, when people weren't buying Coors beer, they weren't blaming Gasbarro's (liquor store)."

Mayor David N. Cicilline's office released a statement that denounces the concert but falls short of joining the call for a boycott: "I am deeply disappointed to see an act that advocates violence against gays and lesbians in our city. Among the core values in Providence is our appreciation and respect for diversity. The most effective way to discourage this kind of act from coming to our city is for people not to attend the show."

Dancehall reggae is a more electronic-based, harder-edged version of the lilting roots reggae of Bob Marley or Gregory Isaacs.

Beenie Man's "That's Right," for example, is a catchy, exuberant mix of syncopated bass drum, synthesizer string hits and quick handclap rhythms. It's an obvious dancefloor banger.

But under the heavy accents and Jamaican patois, in which "chi chi man" and "batty boy" are derogatory terms for homosexuals, the message is less than euphoric: "When we burn chi chi man and me burn sodomite/ And everybody bawl out, say 'That's Right'/ . . . 'Cause when we burn chi chi man nothing no wrong/ And when we burn lesbian nothing no wrong." In "Han Up Deh," he raps, "Hang chi chi gal with a long piece of rope." In Buju Banton's "Boom Bye Bye," the lyrics include "Anytime Buju Banton come/ Batty boy get up and run/ Boom bye bye in a batty boy head."

Lupo says that he's booking his club the way he sees fit.

"First and foremost, for 30 years I've run a club where I didn't censor the art," Lupo said earlier this week. "I have stopped shows where the law was broken during the show, or we've not booked shows because we were afraid the crowd would be too violent. I've never not booked a show because of the content of the material by the artist. And that's the most important issue to me. . . .

"I am going to do the show. If we can help educate people at all, we'd be glad to help them out," Lupo said.

Schwartz, the agent for Beenie Man and Buju Banton, said in a statement yesterday that "I realize previously recorded lyrics [by Beenie Man] are offensive to some, but these songs are not performed in his concerts and there is never an intent to incite violence nor hurt any human being." Beenie Man has been on tour for three weeks and there hasn't been "an incident" yet, Schwartz says, nor has there ever been one at a U.S. concert. "The concern over what he might say and do live is unnecessary and not warranted."

Joe Brummer, of Voices Against Hate, said yesterday that he could not recall an incident of homophobic violence connected to a Providence Beenie Man show, but that such crimes can be hard to distinguish.

Lupo says he's had Beenie Man at his club every year for about 10 years (including Aug. 4 of last year), that neither he, his employees nor any audience members he knows of have heard any homophobic lyrics, and that Beenie Man says he won't perform the objectionable material. "So I don't see what can happen. . . .

"I don't believe the Beenie Man show will in any way harm the gay population of Providence," Lupo said. "But beyond that feeling is my belief that censorship is censorship, and that's wrong."

According to Karen Izzo, of Voices Against Hate, it doesn't matter whether either performer does any of the homophobic songs. A concert is an advertisement for a performer and the totality of his recorded output, Izzo said yesterday. "People can go out and buy this music whether they perform it or not."

(Several of the songs can be heard or bought over the Internet. A quick check at Newbury Comics, a chain record store in the Providence Place mall, found six to seven records each for Beenie Man and Buju Banton, but none contained the songs that have been the subject of concern by Voices Against Hate and other groups.)

As for accusations of censorship, "This is not a free-speech issue," said Izzo, a former lawyer. " . . . There is no right to be compensated. No one should pay these men" to perform, and "people should exercise their rights in a free-market economy not to reward" such performers.

Teny Gross, of the Providence chapter of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence, said at the press conference that "the mirror is on us" in Providence and that, over and above being a gay-rights issue, homophobia is "an attack on all of us."

On Sunday night, Beenie Man is scheduled to perform at Higher Ground, in South Burlington, Vt. Box office manager Nick Mavodones said yesterday that while there have been rumblings of potential protests at several reggae shows in the past, nothing has materialized, and that he's heard nothing about potential protests about this show.

This isn't the first time Beenie Man's lyrics have caused trouble. A tour of the United Kingdom was canceled in March of this year, a 14-date U.S. tour was scrapped in August 2004 (shortly after the Lupo's performance) and his appearance at last year's MTV Video Music Awards was canceled.

And Banton is scheduled to stand trial next year on charges that he participated in an attack on a group of men in their home in Jamaica.

Last year, right after the Lupo's performance (which went off without incident), Beenie Man issued an apology through his record company, Virgin Records: "While my lyrics are very personal, I do not write them with the intent of purposefully hurting or maligning others, and I offer my sincerest apologies to those who might have been offended, threatened or hurt by my songs. As a human being, I renounce violence towards other human beings in every way, and pledge henceforth to uphold these values as I move forward in my career as an artist."

The next day, Clyde McKenzie, of Beenie Man's PR company, Shocking Vibes, told Radio Jamaica that the statement was "not an apology" and spoke of violence in general, not homophobia.

And less than three weeks later, after the cancellation of his U.S. tour, Beenie Man renounced his apology onstage in Jamaica, according to the Jamaica Observer, and performed "some of the songs that have drawn the ire of the international gay community."

That's a good example of the bind dancehall artists are caught in as they try to move beyond Jamaica into popularity on the world stage.

Beenie Man recorded his first song at age 8. Back to Basics, his third major-label album, was released last year, and is full of infectious rhythms and ingenious electronic compositions (and, as far as these ears can tell, no homophobic lyrics). He has recorded with mainstream singers such as Janet Jackson, Lil' Kim, Kelis and Wyclef Jean, and worked with producers including The Neptunes and Timbaland.

Last year, Beenie Man told the Washington Post, "I think Jamaica is not a world that's open to the rest of the world; it's enclosed. [I] go out in the world and know that, okay, gay people are born to be gay. . . . This is their ways; you can not change it. There's nothing they can do to help themselves, you know. Just like a man love woman, you got man love man," he says.

According to Dave Stelfox, a dancehall DJ and critic in East London who has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the magazine Uncut and the Web site Pitchfork Media, the tag "hate artist" is "a bit of an exaggeration" regarding Beenie Man. But at the same time he continues to put out records with homophobic lyrics in his own country. ("Han Up Deh," for example, was released in 2003; Banton's "Boom Bye Bye," originally recorded in 1992, was re-released on a compilation in 2001.)

Stelfox says that much of the homophobia in dancehall is rote -- a catchphrase method of getting a rise out of a crowd, similar to an arena rocker yelling "Providence! How you doing!"

"A lot of it is kind of posturing and overstatement," Stelfox says, "and it has a cartoon-like quality to it. I know it's all very well to say that in context, when I'm not a gay person and not living in Jamaica. But I've always had the feeling that it's not as sincere as it sounds. . . .

"I don't think it's explicitly calling for people to murder homosexuals; I really don't. But there is a huge amount of antipathy toward them. That is a real big problem."

Things are changing slowly, Stelfox says. "One drop" reggae, with lyrics about the struggles of life in Jamaica and how to change things, has been dominating the Jamaican charts for a year and a half, Stelfox says.

Still, homosexuals in Jamaica face plenty of problems. Homosexuality is still illegal in Jamaica, and attacks on homosexuals are frequent. Brian Williamson, a Jamaican gay activist, was slashed to death last year.

Peter Quesnel, of Voices Against Hate, says that he knows a Providence boycott, or even a U.S. one, will have little real effect on the situation of homosexuals in Jamaica, but that they can serve as support to gay activists in that country.

Homophobia, and machismo in general, are deeply ingrained in a country that Stelfox and others say is still steeped in the strict Protestantism of its British colonial past. And Stelfox emphasizes that there's still no excuse for the sentiments expressed. "It's in spite of this stuff that I like this music, rather than because of it."

In Jamaica, the 45-rpm single is still king, Stelfox says, the primary means of recording and selling music. And that's where a lot of the homophobic material gets distributed, rather than on the albums that are released for sale in the United States.

So an artist such as Beenie Man is in the middle. "Beenie Man wants to be a global artist, and has been one for quite some time. So he's got to figure out what game he's playing. When you're working on a global stage, you've got to have the sense to not say this stuff, because it will land you in trouble.

"There really is a dichotomy between being popular in Jamaica and being popular elsewhere."

Newer dancehall stars are cannier at playing the game, Stelfox says. While Sean Paul (who is coming to Lupo's Dec. 10), for instance, hasn't publicly come out against homophobia, he has said that the music is being dragged down by the issues that such lyrical content brings up.

According to voices Against Hate, Beenie Man's apologies aren't worth anything, since they've been retracted. And the fact that he and Banton probably won't perform any homophobic lyrics, or the percentage of their material that is homophobic, isn't important.

Dennis Byrnes, of Voices Against Hate, in a conversation last week also focused on the local ramifications of a Beenie Man performance.

"These people have advocated, and continue to make money on lyrics that ask people, tell people, to go out and murder gay men and lesbians. If they were getting up there and saying 'kill blacks,' would they be given a platform to do it in the city of Providence? Or 'kill Jews'? I doubt it."

Lupo says they probably would. "There haven't been disgusting lyrics by the reggae performers, but I've seen lyrics by other performers regarding other minority groups that have been just as bad. . . . "

Lupo called the controversy over the concert "America at work. I think I'm doing the right thing, and for them they're doing the right thing."

If Monday's concert goes on, Voices of Hate will stage a protest. "If there's a concert, we'll be there," Brummer said.

CLARIFICATION: An earlier headline on this story incorrectly indicated that the boycott was limited to the two reggae concerts.