Cherisse Moe

This year's In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Awards pre­sen­ta­tion is head­ing to the home of the stars-Hol­ly­wood. To suc­cess­ful­ly stage the event, or­gan­is­ers are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to fork out $5 mil­lion. Pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Awards Or­gan­i­sa­tion (SAO) Col­in Jack­man, said the com­pa­ny in­tends to meet with Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters to­mor­row to get the project off the ground.

Jack­man said host­ing the event at the Hol­ly­wood Hills of Los An­ge­les, Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia, could open many doors for so­ca artistes and cat­a­pult T&T in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light. Keenan Munroe, SOA op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

"This is some­thing the gov­ern­ment should spend $20m to stage. That's how im­por­tant I think this event is. The pow­er of so­ca is strong. We should all be about tak­ing so­ca to high­er heights," he said. The June 29 gala event would fea­ture over 30 cat­e­gories and Munroe said the nom­i­nees would be re­leased on May 1.

Last year, the awards, which took place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), re­ceived poor re­views from the me­dia and was dubbed a sub­stan­dard event by many who at­tend­ed. This time around, Munroe promised that things would be bet­ter.

He added that the awards, now in its tenth in­stal­ment, is be­ing pro­mot­ed in the US as the pre­miere event to mark the start of cel­e­bra­tions for the 50th In­de­pen­dence Ju­bilee year of T&T. The high­light of the awards, he said, would be a spe­cial col­lab­o­ra­tion of per­for­mances by so­ca artistes and spe­cial sur­prise guests.

Pre­ced­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny would be a Red Car­pet Event and pre show, show­cas­ing so­ca, ca­lyp­so, steel pan, tas­sa and Car­ni­val mas por­tray­als. This year's ho­n­ourees in­clude Ca­lyp­so Rose, Bri­an Mac Far­lane, Machel Mon­tano, Rik­ki Jai and Black Stal­in.

Head of pro­gram­ming at SLAM 100.5FM, Joel Mor­ris, said the ur­ban fre­quen­cy was the of­fi­cial sta­tion for the awards and de­scribed it as "an­oth­er big step in the his­to­ry of T&T." Mor­ris, who al­so called on cor­po­rate T&T to jump on board the project, said Slam in­tend­ed to launch a se­ries of cam­paigns and pro­mo­tions to high­light the up­com­ing awards.

"So­ca lovers will get a chance to win a week­end va­ca­tion in Hol­ly­wood for the show and we will be on the Red Car­pet bring­ing all the ac­tion." Keron Adams, pres­i­dent of Reg­u­larz En­ter­tain­ment, Los An­ge­les Cul­ture Fes­ti­val, said his or­gan­i­sa­tion sup­port­ed the ven­ture and was mov­ing to launch Car­ni­val in Los An­ge­les on June 30, the same week­end as the BET awards in Los An­ge­les.