Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Twen­ty five chut­ney artistes have qual­i­fied to vie for a to­tal of $1.25 mil­lion in the 50th An­niver­sary In­de­pen­dence Chut­ney So­ca Monarch. The screen­ing for the show took place last Sat­ur­day at Gulf View. A to­tal of 46 artistes sub­mit­ted en­tries for con­sid­er­a­tion and per­formed in front of a screen­ing com­mit­tee us­ing their CD tracks.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee said it was pleased with the qual­i­ty of lyrics and songs in gen­er­al say­ing "it was one of the best crop of songs ever pro­duced for a com­pe­ti­tion in the Chut­ney So­ca are­na." Ken­neth Su­per­sad topped the scores with a strong de­liv­ery ac­com­pa­nied by his daugh­ter who did back­ground vo­cals. There were many oth­er im­pres­sive ren­di­tions by Rooplal Gird­har­rie, So­ca Elvis and Chris Gar­cia.

The 25 artistes cho­sen will move on to the semi­fi­nal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion to be held at the Gulf City Shop­ping Com­plex. The show will be free to the pub­lic. The grand fi­nal will be held on Au­gust 18 at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do. A to­tal of $1.25 mil­lion will be paid to artistes tak­ing part in this spe­cial com­pe­ti­tion, with a first prize of $500, 000, sec­ond prize of $250,000 and third prize of $150, 000.

All oth­er fi­nal­ists will take home $50,000. Tick­ets for the fi­nal will be on sale short­ly at a cost of $50.

The 25 semi­fi­nal­ists are:

MAR­VA MACKEN­ZIE

WACK­ER­MAN

ADESH SAMA­ROO

ROOPLAL GIRD­HAR­RIE

FAL­CO

CHRIS GAR­CIA

KEN­NETH SAL­ICK

KEN­NETH SU­PER­SAD

MARIO JIT­MAN

RAVI BA­BOORAM

NIGEL SAL­ICK­RAM

MO­HIP POON­WASSIE

ED­WARD RAM­DASS

HEER­ALAL RAM­PAR­TAP

RIK­KI JAI, SAL­LY SAGRAM

AR­TI BUTKOON

KI PER­SAD

SO­CA ELVIS

O'NEIL BHA­J­MAN

NISHA RAMKISSOON

DRU­PATEE

SALEEM BE­HAR­RY

RA­JIN DHAN­RAJ

OMA­DATH MA­HARAJ