DAVID CUFFY

Fritz Tay­lor of East­ern Cred­it Union, singing Gone Where The Mon­ey Is, emerged the win­ner of the 2012 Cor­po­rate Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. In sec­ond place was Ke­vaughn Me­dine of NL­CB whose ren­di­tion was Day By Day, while Levy Dick of At­lantic LNG came third with his per­for­mance of Na­tion Builders.

In the fi­nals, the 16 par­tic­i­pat­ing con­tes­tants were win­ners of in-house ca­lyp­so con­tests held at East­ern Cred­it Union, NL­CB, At­lantic LNG, Rhand Cred­it Union, WASA, MTS, TTEC, An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed, TSTT, Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Min­istry of The Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Cen­tral Bank, AM­CHAM, and Queen's Park Crick­et Club.

At the pre­sen­ta­tion of prizes func­tion staged on Thurs­day at NALIS in Port-of-Spain, the out­stand­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, backed by the mu­si­cal ag­gre­ga­tion Re­flec­tions, show­cased their prize win­ning com­po­si­tions to an ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence.

Dex­ter Charles, First Cit­i­zens Group Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment man­ag­er, speak­ing at the func­tion said recog­ni­tion must be paid to the Vin­tage Kaiso Brigade, pro­duc­ers of the com­pe­ti­tion, for their un­re­lent­ing com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to en­sur­ing that it was es­tab­lished.

"In do­ing so, trib­ute must be paid to An­drew Mar­cano (Lord Su­pe­ri­or), Mervyn Telfer, and their team, for their vi­sion and pas­sion to en­sure that what was an idea turned in­to re­al­i­ty," he said, adding that Mar­cano and Telfer epit­o­mised his per­son­al mantra which is: "What­ev­er you vivid­ly imag­ine, ar­dent­ly de­sire, sin­cere­ly be­lieve, and en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly act up­on will come to pass."

He al­so pledged the con­tin­ued sup­port of First Cit­i­zens. "I am proud to rep­re­sent, with all due re­spect to my com­peti­tors, the on­ly tru­ly lo­cal bank in Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said. "And with that in mind, we were again priv­i­leged to be a key sup­port­er of this event, one that con­tributes pos­i­tive­ly to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of lo­cal cul­ture."

Phillips ex­pressed a de­sire to see, com­ing out of the com­pe­ti­tion, pro­duc­tion of DVDs and oth­er prod­ucts, as well as the songs in the event be­com­ing the theme of the com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ed. He pledged his com­pa­ny's on­go­ing sup­port for the ef­fort

that he termed "some­thing that is good for the coun­try."

Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions in the cor­po­rate sec­tor have grown over the years. Ear­ly pro­duc­ers of these events in­clude the T&T Guardian, Har­vard Sports Club, Roy­al Bank, Petrotrin, TATIL, Queen's Park Crick­et Club, Re­pub­lic Bank, Wasa and Carib Brew­ery. The con­tests have spawned some of to­day's pop­u­lar bards, in­clud­ing David Bereaux, Hol­lis Wright, Dirty Cur­ty, Nin­ja, Roy­al Ben­ji, Doppy and oth­ers.