Aba A Luke

Sex­i­ly clad in black, tat­too bared for all to see, and a tease in every sense of the word last Sat­ur­day, Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez showed that she's still got the ven­om of a re­al Car­ni­val queen. She came on stage af­ter oth­er In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch con­tenders like De­stra Gar­cia and Machel Mon­tano, but her win­ing prowess and slen­der im­age left many in awe.

Fay Ann's ap­pear­ance was enough to cause a stir. Many had been won­der­ing what had been the mat­ter with her, but she proved that she could be all that she wish­es...when­ev­er she wish­es. Li­cens­ing Fete, billed as one of Car­ni­val's biggest at­trac­tions, with a slew of so­ca su­per­stars vy­ing for the So­ca Monarch ti­tles, and even Ja­maica's Vy­bz Kar­tel booked to per­form, lived up to the ex­pec­ta­tions of many, but failed those who ex­pe­ri­enced the back­lash of oc­ca­sion­al skir­mish­es in the gen­er­al ad­mis­sion area.

De­stra doesn't bring bac­cha­nal

De­stra Gar­cia, clad in a cat suit that showed off her cur­va­ceous fig­ure, hit the stage lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled, and she apol­o­gised for her late start and praised Machel for al­low­ing her to car­ry on with her per­for­mance. On stage, the so­ca di­va, who on­ly one year ago gave birth to a ba­by girl, looked the part of a tru­ly charis­mat­ic per­former but some­thing just didn't seem to im­press the crowd.

Whether her per­for­mance lacked Car­ni­val fer­vour, as there was a lot of Be­y­once-like an­tics from dancers and De­stra her­self, or whether her health was to be ques­tioned as ru­mours ear­li­er cir­cu­lat­ed that she had been down with dengue a week be­fore, is yet to be de­ter­mined. But the De­stra who gave us Bac­cha­nal in 2009 just wasn't there.

Tak­ing the stage with the di­va was Su­per Jig­ga TC. To­geth­er, they ex­e­cut­ed well with De­stra dom­i­nat­ing in a way that made the King of Swagg seem like a pet wait­ing to be fed. Their col­lab­o­ra­tive sin­gle, Feel To Wine, went down well and they ac­knowl­edged then and there that they'd be per­form­ing it at the So­ca Monarch semis, which they did.

Machel makes rain

Machel hit the stage next, and it was as though the earth shook for one minute as he sent the crowd in a fren­zy when he com­mand­ed them to, "tram­ple it, ram­fle it and stomp on it." Dressed in white, he an­nounced that un­like De­stra, he would be com­pet­ing for "com­pe­ti­tion sake" and there'd be no hold­ing back when he hit the stage on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day. Dur­ing his per­for­mance, it driz­zled, just like it did at the WASA oc­ca­sion. He per­formed along with the HD dancers and was lat­er joined by Farmer Nap­py, Zan and Patrice Roberts, whose black-and-white striped kit was enough to stop traf­fic.

She de­liv­ered well and showed her stuff when mo­tioned to do so by the boss. Patrice's new on-stage win­ing an­tics of­fer just a snip­pet of the stage shows on which the band has been cap­i­tal­is­ing at fetes across the is­land this sea­son. Machel took the crowd on a jour­ney of past hits, go­ing all the way back to Big Truck, and lat­er bring­ing his fe­male dancer Nicole Dook­ie to the fore for their eye-pop­ping per­for­mance of Bend Over. It was in­deed a spec­ta­cle and one that time and time again, has proven to catch the crowd with their mouths open in awe.

Hype and hap­pi­ness

Fay Ann, Bun­ji and Asy­lum, while of­fer­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less to a crowd that had been hyped up by Machel's en­er­gy less than an hour be­fore, had mo­ments of pow­er. The crowd lat­er heard from Ja­maica's Vy­bz Kar­tel, who came on with KMC. He was joined on stage by Pop­caan, which cer­tain­ly made the youths very hap­py.