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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Car­ni­val 2014

The young king of calypso - Marcelle rebrands

by

20140216

When the Na­tion­al Ac­tion Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee (NACC) holds the 2014 Young Kings Monarch fi­nal tonight, a new cham­pi­on will be crowned.

In this com­pe­ti­tion, the win­ner can­not come back to de­fend the ti­tle, guar­an­tee­ing a new name on the tro­phy.

Last year, the ti­tle was won by Stephen Mar­celle, cur­rent­ly a lead vo­cal­ist of Caribbean Traf­fik Jam. Mar­celle, a vet­er­an karaoke and lip synch per­former, said his one-year reign changed his con­cept of the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try.

"One needs to have a name to go with the ti­tle for suc­cess. It's as though pro­mot­ers have no re­spect for the or­gan­i­sa­tion that runs Young Kings or the ti­tle the monarch holds. The monarch has to pro­mote him­self. The up­side is that the monarch does get more ac­cep­tance with au­di­ences abroad."

Dur­ing the year, Mar­celle has per­formed in Toron­to, Cu­ra­cao and Bar­ba­dos, tours he said were ini­ti­at­ed by him­self. "In the ma­jor for­eign car­ni­vals, you would see the cham­pi­ons from T&T be­ing the na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch and the win­ners of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch, not the Young Kings monarch," said Mar­celle.

Mar­celle added: "The past year has been good for me though. I gained more con­fi­dence in my­self and I be­came more eas­i­ly recog­nis­able to John Pub­lic."

For Car­ni­val 2014, Mar­celle has been per­form­ing with the Gen­er­a­tion Next ca­lyp­so tent, based at CWU Hall, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain. He is singing Al­most Doesn't Count, a song writ­ten by Kevin Mar­cano and which is at­tract­ing lots of en­cores night­ly in the tent. His oth­er songs are Cul­ture Dy­ing and What is a Big Song.

Mar­celle said: "This year my fo­cus is on the Big Yard and the band. When one av­enue opens you gain con­fi­dence to open oth­ers. For me it for­ward ever back­ward nev­er. My aim is to win the ti­tle of na­tion­al monarch now held by Pink Pan­ther.

"I have re­brand­ed my­self and I'm work­ing on my im­age. My so­bri­quet is Stephen MAS. I have songs to re­lease af­ter Car­ni­val, aimed at the dance­hall, R&B and house mu­sic mar­kets. I have songs for Car­ni­val 2015, in­clud­ing two groovy so­ca, a pow­er so­ca and a Chut­ney So­ca."

Al­ways an artiste who read­i­ly shares his ex­pe­ri­ence and ad­vice to new­com­ers to the art form. He said: "I usu­al­ly like giv­ing ad­vice when I sing ca­lyp­so. For in­stance, in 2012, my ad­vice was through song was Stand up and Be Count­ed. In 2013, my ad­vice was Pol­i­tics Does Spoil de Lime and as we all wit­nessed it re­al­ly did spoil a few limes well. So, af­ter sum­maris­ing the whole lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions held re­cent­ly my ad­vice this year is main­ly to the politi­cians it is Al­most Doesn't Count. It was clev­er­ly struc­tured by Kevin Mar­cano who penned it, mix­ing his­to­ry with pol­i­tics. It was well re­ceived on judges' night at the tent and had pa­trons ask­ing for more how­ev­er they were in­formed by the em­cee that there will be no en­cores on judges night."

Mar­celle al­so had ad­vice for the fi­nal­ists in this year's Young Kings Monarch con­test. He said: "As a con­tes­tant you sim­ply have to be con­fi­dent in your­self, trust your­self and leave every­thing up to the judges. I think that NACC is do­ing a very good show prov­ing a fo­rum to ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who will not get much pro­file in Car­ni­val. What is nice about the com­pe­ti­tion is that the monarch isn't al­lowed to re­turn to com­pete. This caus­es there to be al­ways space for an­oth­er up and com­ing star."

Mar­celle is con­tin­u­ing school at Sital Col­lege, study­ing Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment. Hope­ful­ly he will get his de­gree in 2015, along with win­ning more ca­lyp­so ti­tles.

The 2014 Young Kings Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion takes place tonight at Na­pa. For in­for­ma­tion con­tact the NACC of­fices at 40 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain or call 623-5470.

Past win­ners of the Young Kings Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion

1985 Lu­ta (Morel Pe­ters)

1986 David Rud­der

1987 Bal­ly (Er­rol Bal­lan­tyne)

1988 Cro Cro (We­st­on Rawl­ins)

1989 Tam­bu (Chris Her­bert) and Pro­tec­tor (Michael Leg­erton)

1990 Sug­ar Aloes (Michael Os­una), Denyse Plum­mer, De Fos­to ( Win­ston Scar­bor­ough)

1991 Machel Mon­tano

1992 Pink Pan­ther (Er­ic Tay­lor)

1993 Kurt Allen

1994 De­lamo (Franz Lam­bkin)

1995 Watch­man (Wayne Hayde)

1996 Ker­win du Bois

1997 GB(Gre­go­ry Bal­lan­tyne)

1998 Shel­don Reid

1999 Wayne Ro­driguez

2000 Tony Prescott

2001 Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Alavarez) and Rik­ki Jai (Sam­raj Jaimun­gal)

2002 Man­child (Carl­ton Collins)

2003 Roger George and Skatie (Car­los James)

2004 Bri­an Lon­don

2005 Im­pulse (Wayne Mod­este)

2006 Sean Daniel

2007 Body­guard (Roger Mo­hammed)

2008 Mighty Di­a­mond (Patrick Lewis)

2009 Jer­vae Cae­sar

2010 Kwe­si Jef­fers

2011 Ben­jai (Rod­ney Le Blanc)

2012 Du­anne O'Con­nor

2013 Stephen Mar­celle


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