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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Daniell: Upgrade needed in calypso judging

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20140326

Ca­lyp­so en­thu­si­ast Alvin Daniell con­tends that the time has come for a com­pre­hen­sive up­grade in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion sys­tem of ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions.

Daniell made the com­ment in a pa­per ti­tled Ca­lyp­so 2014 de­liv­ered at A Na­tion­al Cit­i­zens' Con­ver­sa­tion on the Car­ni­val, pre­sent­ed by the Artists Coali­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day.

Daniell was the first pre­sen­ter at the event which be­gan two hours lat­er than the ad­ver­tised 9 am start time, be­fore a mea­gre au­di­ence of just 20 per­sons.

"Thir­ty years ago, the ca­lyp­so tents held their open­ing night at the be­gin­ning of Jan­u­ary and even as ear­ly as Box­ing Day of the pre­vi­ous year," he stat­ed. "This al­lowed the tents to run for as long as six to eight weeks de­pend­ing on the dates of Car­ni­val. Thus, the pre­lim­i­nary judges could vis­it each tent twice, al­low­ing them to bet­ter as­sess the songs and the per­for­mances by the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. To­day, the judges are lucky if they get to vis­it a tent once, far more twice, as many of the tents open for just three to four weeks. The re­sult of this is that many ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are forced to sing to the judges on an as­signed day, out­side of the tent en­vi­ron­ment, when as many as a hun­dred artistes may per­form. This hard­ly rep­re­sents a fair plat­form for the as­sess­ment of the best songs at pre­lim­i­nary lev­el."

Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­is­er, the event was staged with the aim of "cre­at­ing a Cit­i­zens Ac­tion Com­mit­tee to in­ter­vene in ways that will res­cue the Port-of-Spain Car­ni­val from col­lapse." It was car­ried live on Gayelle The Chan­nel.

A num­ber of speak­ers were ex­pect­ed to present on a range of top­ics on all as­pects of the Car­ni­val tra­di­tions and their cur­rent state. Con­firmed speak­ers, the or­gan­is­er said, in­clud­ed mem­bers of the steel­band, mas, so­ca, chut­ney, and ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty, UWI and UTT lec­tur­ers, and ac­tivists from east Port-of-Spain.

Daniell went on to state that the se­lec­tion of the 40 ca­lyp­so­ni­ans for the se­mi-fi­nals, in­creased from the for­mer 24, was an­oth­er both­er. "No marks are re­leased, just the names of the qual­i­fiers," he said. "If a ca­lyp­son­ian re­quests his marks, he or she is al­lowed to see it, but in iso­la­tion. This does not tell the in­quir­er where they placed and why."

He said it was an ex­er­cise in se­cre­cy for the com­peti­tors and the pub­lic, as even the judges were obliv­i­ous to how the fi­nal 11 to face the de­fend­ing monarch were se­lect­ed.

"Not that I doubt that a method is in place, but the trans­paren­cy is not there, lead­ing to wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that some sort of fix­ing of re­sults may have tak­en place."

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the sys­tem that al­lows for sep­a­rate judges to ad­ju­di­cate lyrics, mu­sic and per­for­mance. "I am yet to un­der­stand how one can di­vorce lyrics from mu­sic in as­sess­ing the qual­i­ty of a ca­lyp­so," he ar­gued. "If that be the case why not put the judges in a room with the lyric sheets and let them mark it like a com­po­si­tion? Or when judg­ing per­for­mance let them wear head­phones to block out the song, so that they can con­cen­trate on the per­for­mance on­ly. Ca­lyp­so is about the in­ti­mate mar­riage of lyrics and melody and many sim­plis­tic lyrics work best with the right melody. Truth is that it is not the sys­tem that is at fault but the qual­i­ty of the judges."

His rec­om­men­da­tion for an up­grade in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion process in­cludes go­ing back to 24 con­tes­tants in the se­mi-fi­nal, singing two ca­lyp­soes each, and se­lect­ing 11 to com­pete against the reign­ing monarch.


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