Cherisse Moe

The man has spo­ken. This year's In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion will be big­ger and bet­ter, says William Munro, chair­man of the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion and the mas­ter­mind be­hind the 19-year-old com­pe­ti­tion. Thou­sands are ex­pect­ed to con­verge at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to­mor­row, dubbed Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, for the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed event which Munro promis­es would be one artistes and fans would re­mem­ber for years to come.

Stat­ing that pa­trons could ex­pect a high-en­er­gy show with mind-blow­ing per­for­mances, Munro said his aim had al­ways been to cat­a­pult the Caribbean's artistes in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light and mar­ket so­ca mu­sic to the world. "The songs are there to prove it...When you get so many songs in one year, what else can you ex­pect but for every­body to en­joy­ing them­selves?" he said. De­scrib­ing the com­pe­ti­tion as "so­ca tourism," Munro told the T&T Guardian it was all about rais­ing the bar and show­cas­ing the mu­si­cal tal­ent of lo­cal and re­gion­al artistes.

He said it was al­so an op­por­tune time for the Gov­ern­ment to use the en­ter­tain­ment and arts sec­tors to help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from its de­pen­dence on oil and gas. "This prod­uct that we have here, the Gov­ern­ment has to em­brace it," Munro said. "We would beat back Miss Uni­verse and Miss World...We have to see the beau­ty, en­er­gy and tech­nol­o­gy at work and re­al­ly un­der­stand, nur­ture and mer­chan­dise this prod­uct to the world."

While the is­sue of the $2 mil­lion first prize for the Pow­er So­ca Monarch re­mained a hot top­ic in the so­ca are­na, Munro said he was "very pleased" that the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing the com­pe­ti­tion se­ri­ous­ly and re­ward­ing artistes for their hard work and com­mit­ment to the art form. "Artistes spend their mon­ey and they need prop­er com­pen­sa­tion...It's an in­vest­ment that the Gov­ern­ment will gain ten­fold," he said.

"It will be nice for the prize mon­ey to be a lil' $3 mil­lion and the sec­ond place, $1 mil­lion, from next year."

The com­pe­ti­tion will be tele­vised live on CNC3.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd is an of­fi­cial spon­sor of the event.