Pe­ter Ray Blood

"William Munro is the Berry Gordy of so­ca mu­sic."This af­fir­ma­tion, and com­par­i­son be­tween the So­ca Monarch founder and the founder of the Mo­town record la­bel was made by joint 2013 Play Whe In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch Su­perBlue (Austin Lyons) on Mon­day evening at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Lyons had just col­lect­ed the first prize he shared with Machel Mon­tano. The oc­ca­sion was the prize-giv­ing func­tion for the Fla­vorite Supreme Ice Cream Na­tion­al Schools So­ca Monarch, Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Groovy So­ca Monarch and In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions.

Held be­fore a stand­ing-room-on­ly au­di­ence, the func­tion was at­tend­ed by a num­ber of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, diplo­mats, spon­sors and artistes, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters, Min­is­ter of Labour Er­rol McLeod, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Ru­pert Grif­fith, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, Philip­pines con­sul Dr Marie Ad­vani, NL­CB di­rec­tor Bri­an Sawh, Dig­i­cel CEO John Delves, T&T Guardian gen­er­al man­ag­er Dou­glas Wil­son and Tu­co head Lu­ta­lo "Bro Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba.

The three-hour pro­gramme was co-host­ed by Mark An­tho­ny and Wen­dell Con­stan­tine and in­clud­ed per­for­mances by the cham­pi­ons and oth­ers guests, in­clud­ing Mon­tano, Su­perBlue, school mon­archs Jeromy Ro­driguez and Fer­di­nand Smith, Shel­don Black­man, Fya Em­press, Patrice Roberts and 3Canal, the lat­ter ac­com­pa­ny­ing Su­perBlue.

In his ad­dress, Cul­ture Min­is­ter Dou­glas dis­closed that the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to­wards en­cour­ag­ing ra­dio sta­tions to play a high­er per­cent­age of lo­cal mu­sic. He said one in­duce­ment could be in­creased tax in­cen­tives for sta­tions. Dou­glas said the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to es­tab­lish­ing a 50 per cent quo­ta for lo­cal mu­sic on the air­waves.

Say­ing T&T is a vir­tu­al fac­to­ry for pro­duc­ing mu­sic, pan and mas, the min­is­ter said the coun­try's pop­u­la­tion is not large enough to sup­port its pro­duc­tion of mu­sic. He sug­gest­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic agen­cies be sought to dis­till, mar­ket and pro­mote T&T mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML) was one of the ma­jor spon­sors of the com­pe­ti­tion.