Kali­fa Clyne

High, shrill, ex­cit­ed screams pierced the air as Ker­win Du Bois was an­nounced to take the stage at the Ari­ma Velo­drome dur­ing the So­ca Monarch se­mi-fi­nals on Sun­day night, tes­ta­ment that Du Bois' 2014 hit Too Re­al is a strong con­tender to de­throne Machel Mon­tano as the Groovy King.Du Bois made his way on stage dressed in black and ac­com­pa­nied by four fe­male dancers, in very lit­tle cloth­ing and fish­net tights, while ask­ing fans for per­mis­sion to "wuk" them. That's ex­act­ly what he did, breath­ing life in­to an al­most full velo­drome au­di­ence.He was one of the first of the com­peti­tors to do so at an event which start­ed prompt­ly at 4 pm and fin­ished af­ter 4 am.Du Bois per­formed short­ly af­ter 6 pm.

The Groovy cat­e­go­ry, which fea­tured 40 com­peti­tors, proved to please pa­trons the most and is like­ly to prove dif­fi­cult for judges, as from crowd re­sponse, 18 of the com­peti­tors im­pressed the au­di­ence.Reign­ing joint Pow­er So­ca Monarch Su­per Blue (Austin Lyons), who was ex­pect­ed to per­form in the Groovy cat­e­go­ry, was not present.Du Bois was not the on­ly per­former to shine in the Groovy cat­e­go­ry and is in for some healthy com­pe­ti­tion as he aims for the crown.From fur­ther up the is­lands St Vin­cent's Skin­ny Fab­u­lous (Gamal Doyle) had more big flags wav­ing, bod­ies mov­ing, hands rais­ing and women win­ing than any oth­er com­peti­tor. The crowd thor­ough­ly en­joyed his in­ter­ac­tion and the song it­self.Grena­da's Tal­pree (Wilt Cam­bridge) caused fire of­fi­cers to stand by with ex­tin­guish­ers as fire-blow­ers spat flames at the dark sky while he per­formed Jab Na­tion.Farmer Nap­py's (Dar­ryl Hen­ry) per­for­mance fea­tured ball­room danc­ing and had pa­trons copy­ing the dance moves in the crowd. The song Big Peo­ple Par­ty was well-re­ceived.

Er­phaan Alves al­so de­liv­ered vo­cal­ly with his pre­sen­ta­tion for his per­for­mance of Con­ta­gious.While the Groovy of­fered a lot in terms of com­pe­ti­tion, this year's So­ca Monarch se­mi-fi­nals fea­tured a lot of songs which pa­trons did not know, judg­ing by the con­fused looks and the rep­e­ti­tion of the phrase, "I nev­er hear this song in my life."The Pow­er per­for­mances, usu­al­ly the big draw for fans of the com­pe­ti­tion, were a bit dull, though Grena­da's Mr Kil­la (Hol­lice Mapp) made a huge im­pres­sion on the crowd with his an­tics for Rol­ly Pol­ly.The se­mi-fi­nals fea­tured just over 70 per­for­mances and were punc­tu­at­ed with in­ter­mis­sions, dur­ing which DJs en­ter­tained the crowd along with lengthy com­men­tary from hosts Hans­ley Ajod­ha and Lur­bz from Slam 100.5 FM.This year, Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion al­lowed cool­ers in­to the venue, a de­ci­sion that did not prove pop­u­lar, as most pa­trons fre­quent­ed the many food and drink stalls around the venue.The crowd trick­led in steadi­ly un­til by about 8 pm, the Velo­drome was a sea of wav­ing, jump­ing bod­ies that spread from the front of the stage to the stands about 200 me­tres away.