Sean Nero

Reign­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er (So­ca) Monarch Machel Mon­tano and de­fend­ing Na­tion­al Chut­ney Monarch Rik­ki Jai will com­pete in next year's Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion. They made the joint an­nounce­ment of their re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion which served as the foun­da­tion for their ca­reers at Sun­day's stag­ing of Saute Trin­ba­go, pro­duced by Cloud Nine Pro­mo­tions at the NCC Carpark at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. Mon­tano hint­ed that his se­lec­tion for the com­pe­ti­tion was like­ly to be The Youngest Vet­er­an, while Jai's will per­form Love, Fam­i­ly, Life. Con­tact­ed for com­ment on this de­vel­op­ment, reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Karene As­che wel­comed the news."By all means. The com­pe­ti­tion is open to every­one and I don't see why not. It would be in­ter­est­ing," she said, chuck­ling.

Broth­er Re­sis­tance (Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba) pres­i­dent of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), al­so hailed the re­turn of Jai and Mon­tano to the com­pe­ti­tion, de­scrib­ing it as "very good." "Machel and Rik­ki Jai are very much wel­come. We look for­ward to the vi­bra­tion they will bring. The Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion is open to all artistes from T&T. "It will bring a sense of ex­cite­ment to the com­pe­ti­tion. That's where they start­ed. Machel was a for­mer Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch. I could un­der­stand the call­ing," he said.

Young ca­lyp­son­ian Chucky (Rod­er­ick Gor­don) was de­light­ed by the news. Chucky, who de­scribed him­self as a young artiste in the ca­lyp­so genre strad­dling the gen­er­a­tion gap, said the pres­ence of Machel and Jai would draw the at­ten­tion of a younger au­di­ence to the com­pe­ti­tion.

Machel, whose per­for­mance at Saute was one of the high­lights of the event, was on stage for ap­prox­i­mate­ly one hour be­fore the po­lice brought a pre­ma­ture end to the show. His man­ag­er, Liz Mon­tano, said the so­ca su­per­star's set, which in­clud­ed stints with Ben­jai and oth­er pop­u­lar artistes, was not ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed and he co­op­er­at­ed with the po­lice in en­sur­ing that pa­trons left the venue in a peace­ful and or­der­ly man­ner. Jai and Mon­tano were win­ners of the $2 mil­lion first prizes award­ed to the So­ca Monarch and Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions this year.