Di­manche Gras pro­duc­er Carl Hen­der­son stat­ed that the show would be four and a half hours long. A news­pa­per ar­ti­cle men­tioned that the Ca­lyp­so Monarch would take about four hours which meant that "there would on­ly be half an hour for en­ter­tain­ment."

I take it that some­one fig­ured out that the Ca­lyp­so Monarch is no longer en­ter­tain­ment but four hours of te­di­um? That has cer­tain­ly been the trend over the last sev­er­al years and would prob­a­bly be true this year if the So­ca Monarch se­mi-fi­nals is any­thing to go by.

Once again, I won­der why the re­quire­ment to sing two ca­lyp­soes is nec­es­sary. Per­haps there is some his­tor­i­cal rea­son for it but, for a long time now, it just adds length and bor­ing-fac­tor to the shows.

Long gone are the days when one could watch the en­tire show and not be bored. The biggest singing com­pe­ti­tions in the world (The Voice, Eu­ro­pean Song Fes­ti­val, Britain's Got Tal­ent, etc) re­quire one song. Why in­sist on two ca­lyp­soes for Ca­lyp­so Monarch when we are al­most guar­an­teed that at least one, and prob­a­bly two, will be of poor qual­i­ty? Oh, I for­got. It's the great­est show on earth.

Noel Kalicha­ran