The 2013 TSTT Em­ploy­ees' Ca­lyp­so/ So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion left at­ten­dees jump­ing and wav­ing.

The long stand­ing Car­ni­val sta­ple not on­ly pro­vid­ed a fo­rum for the com­pa­ny's staff mem­bers to dis­play their pro­fi­cien­cy in the Ca­lyp­so art form but this year al­so ac­com­mo­dat­ed those gift­ed in mod­ern So­ca com­po­si­tion and per­for­mance.

Now 23 years strong, the an­nu­al con­test fea­tured 14 fi­nal­ists backed by the band Wayne Bruno and Rapid Re­sponse com­pet­ing in front of a pan­el of judges and sup­port­ers rep­re­sent­ing nu­mer­ous TSTT de­part­ments such as Cus­tomer Care, Fi­nance, Mo­bile, En­ter­prise and To­ba­go Op­er­a­tions.

For this 2013 edi­tion en­ti­tled The Ul­ti­mate Show­down, con­tes­tants had the op­tion to per­form ei­ther tra­di­tion­al Ca­lyp­so or So­ca.

A re­lease from TSTT said song top­ics ranged from sub­jects of gen­er­al hu­man in­ter­est to com­men­tary on re­cent po­lit­i­cal oc­curences. Par­tic­i­pants held noth­ing back when it came to uti­liz­ing props, cos­tumes and the ad­di­tion of that unique TSTT 'pi­cong' that has be­come syn­ony­mous with the fun-filled show.

In ad­di­tion to the fierce So­ca and Kaiso com­pe­ti­tion, the crowd at Nel­son Ex­change car park wit­nessed an Ex­tem­po clash be­tween two pa­trons who vied for the grand prize of a new Black­ber­ry de­vice cour­tesy of TSTT.

This bat­tle was ref­er­eed by ex­tem­po champs Black Sage and La­dy Africa.

The en­er­getic au­di­ence was al­so treat­ed to post-com­pe­ti­tion per­for­mances by some of the So­ca in­dus­try's top acts such as Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter and his band YOU, Neil "Iw­er" George, Megan Wal­dron, Chucky, Ter­ri Lyons and Su­perBlue.

COM­PE­TI­TION RE­SULTS

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Ca­lyp­so

1st place–(TSTT Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2013) Ver­non "D Bi Fish­er­man" Bereaux

2nd place–Carl­ton Lou­sion

3rd place–Karen "Cym­ple" Dot­tin

So­ca

1st place–(TSTT So­ca Monarch 2013) Tama­ra "So­ca D'va" Clarke

2nd place–Tri-Dis

3rd place–An­tho­ny "Bony­li­cious" Door­bal