Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Get­ting off to a much ear­li­er start this year and with short­er speech­es, the 2012 Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny kept a smooth flow through­out. Held on Tues­day night at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, the cer­e­mo­ny seemed to place par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on artistes giv­ing back to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Many greet­ings from spon­sors re­mind­ed artistes that their great­ness was nev­er whole with­out sow­ing seeds of grat­i­tude. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh ex­plained to them the im­por­tance of giv­ing back to the very peo­ple who cre­at­ed them and con­tin­ued to lend their sup­port un­selfish­ly.

He said mu­si­cians, much like politi­cians, thrive on the good­will of peo­ple and hav­ing been blessed with a tal­ent of bring­ing the joys of mu­sic to the peo­ple, artistes be­come role mod­els and lead­ers of le­gions of peo­ple who would will­ing­ly sup­port them with­out ques­tion. He added: "That in it­self is a tes­ti­mo­ny to your great abil­i­ties as mu­si­cians but when you re­ceive ac­co­lades, such as these you are re­ceiv­ing tonight, fi­nan­cial prizes that will en­hance your rep­u­ta­tion, liveli­hoods and ca­reers, you are con­strained to re­flect on how you can give back.

"If tonight's theme is ho­n­our­ing the great artistes of our na­tion who have con­tin­ued in 2012 to push for­ward the in­dige­nous mu­si­cal tal­ent that is so­ca, then the very artistes who are be­ing ho­n­oured, I re­spect­ful­ly sug­gest, must adopt a per­son­al theme of giv­ing back." Gopeesingh al­so urged artistes to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to their young sup­port­ers, ad­mon­ish­ing that their mu­sic needs to in­fuse the youth with pos­i­tive in­spi­ra­tion, as it in­flu­ences their habits and even lifestyles.

"I know you are very busy as en­ter­tain­ers, trav­el­ling the world on hec­tic sched­ules, but I wish to urge all artistes present here tonight to find a way to give back to the na­tion's youths, who rank among your most ar­dent fol­low­ers," he added. He said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had im­ple­ment­ed vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts as a ma­jor part of the school cur­ricu­lum and was al­ways will­ing to hold talks on how artistes could en­hance those ad­di­tions via ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion.

"Nev­er be­lieve your work is lim­it­ed to your very great tal­ent of pro­duc­ing mu­sic, not in to­day's so­ci­ety when so many young chil­dren need your in­spi­ra­tion to see that mu­sic can be a life out of crime, pover­ty and de­pres­sion. That mu­sic too, can be a great ca­reer choice," he said.

Life­time award for Su­perBlue

Artistes in their re­spec­tive cat­e­gories were award­ed their prizes with spe­cial awards giv­en to Kasey Phillips and Ker­nal Roberts for most out­stand­ing arrangers, 2012. An award of ap­pre­ci­a­tion was al­so giv­en to Denyse Plum­mer and Er­rol Ince. Austin "Su­perBlue" Lyons re­ceived the So­ca Life­time Con­tri­bu­tion Award and Neil "Iw­er" George at­tract­ed the award for most con­sis­tent per­former, hav­ing per­formed 18 times out of the 20 years the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion ex­ist­ed.

King of so­ca, Machel Mon­tano pledged his con­tin­ued sup­port to the So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion, cul­ture and the young peo­ple of T&T.