On Tuesday, William Munroe launched the 2011 edition of the bmobile Soca Monarch and Play Whe Groovy Soca Monarch competition with a first prize of $2 million at stake for the Soca Monarch winner. It's a reward for performance that has drawn long-absent performers like Ajala to the competition and brought crowd favourite Machel Montano back to contest the title won last year by radio DJs JW and Blaze. And that's as it should be. Since the competition began in 1993, the event has grown to become a centrepiece of the Carnival celebrations, and the Friday night slot it occupies on the pre-Carnival weekend has earned its publicity title, Fantastic Friday.
Calypso purists may view the overwhelming support given by the public to the dance-focused variant of kaiso with some dismay, since it draws crowds that dwarf even the massively popular Calypso Monarch Semi-Finals in San Fernando while attracting an even greater audience via television broadcast feeds and Internet streaming video of the event. There's a case to be made that it is the single most viewed entertainment package during Carnival apart from the parade of the bands on Carnival Tuesday, and as the definitive aggregation of the most popular party songs of the year, it's one of the most marketable. Small wonder then that William Munro, the Chairman of Caribbean Prestige Foundation, the private enterprise producers of the show was keen to make it clear that the event costs close to $20 million to keep it the leading event for soca performers.
More than a contest, the International Soca Monarch is a lively enumeration of the most popular works by the artistes who drive the engine of Carnival and stands as a living record of evolution of the cutting edge of the music of the festival. It is also the only competition during Carnival that is open to competitors from around the world and while most of the non-locals vying for the crown have come from the Caribbean region, that inclusiveness has given the event a much broader appeal. It's arguable that the Groovy Soca Monarch category might never have come into existence if not for that embracing of external influence and viewpoint, since the slower, more romantic songs that constitute that category were largely born in other islands of the Caribbean.
That absence of prophylactic rules designed to preserve a living culture has made the International Soca Monarch competition both unique in Carnival and a lively, diverse and energetic expression of the cutting edge of soca's development as the trophy changed hands over the years from SuperBlue to Ronnie McIntosh to Shadow to Bunji Garlin to Shurwayne Winchester. The Soca Monarch competition is as clear a declaration of this country's ownership of soca music as Panorama is for the steelband, and the parade of the bands is of our own very special interpretation of a pre-Lenten Carnival. Given all these positive aspects of the event, it wasn't surprising that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar made not just increased prize money available for the keynote event but appeared at the launch to celebrate the 2011 event.
In turn, the promoters promised $3 from the sale of each ticket to the Prime Minister's Children's Life Fund. The Prime Minister in turn suggested that the money would be better invested in a fund for ageing and infirm Carnival artistes. For our part, Guardian Media Limited has committed to sponsoring the event and has been named the official media house for the 2011 International Soca Monarch competition. Through our radio division, Guardian Media has been a consistent sponsor of the Road March competition and the Guardian newspaper was an early and steady sponsor of Carnival in the Savannah when such a thing was considered a novelty. Supporting the International Soca Monarch competition is simply an addition to our institutional commitment to the development of Carnival and a tangible investment in its growth and advancement.In order for Carnival to continue to grow and mature, it must be reported on, evaluated and critiqued, but it must also be supported and encouraged. As an independent-minded media house and as a good corporate citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, we are happy to do both.