Sting­ing crit­i­cism from ca­lyp­so bard Selvon "Mis­tah Shak" Noel and his call for an over­haul of the judg­ing sys­tem have re­ceived sup­port. Yes­ter­day, both the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) spoke of de­ci­sions to re­view the rules and pro­ce­dures of the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of com­pe­ti­tions un­der their re­spec­tive port­fo­lios, in time for Car­ni­val 2015.While deny­ing any kind of im­pro­pri­ety in the judg­ing at last Sun­day's Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, Tu­co pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo "Broth­er Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba said he is ready to be­gin the dis­cus­sion on Shak's call for trans­paren­cy.In an in­ter­view on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, NCC chair­man Al­li­son De­mas, who al­so de­nied any kind of trans­gres­sion had tak­en place, said she un­der­stood the need for judges to have more in-depth train­ing, not just in the judg­ing of ca­lyp­so, but across the board.

De­mas said she would work along­side Tu­co, un­der whose port­fo­lio the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion falls.Con­tend­ing that the judg­ing process is shroud­ed in se­cre­cy, Shak pro­posed that the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' scores should be pub­licly dis­played im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter their per­for­mance, as with ath­letes at the Olympics and oth­er sport­ing events. That would make it im­pos­si­ble to tam­per with the scores, he said.Shak's com­ments were based on in­for­ma­tion, he said, came to him from an NCC of­fi­cial, who said the orig­i­nal score placed him as the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch, but the re­sults were al­tered be­cause the even­tu­al win­ner, Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don, had a rel­a­tive on the judg­ing pan­el. Shak end­ed up in third place and Kurt Allen sec­ond.Re­sis­tance pro­duced the fi­nal judges' list which did not iden­ti­fy the rel­a­tive, Nor­ma Clarke, as be­ing on the pan­el.

He said he had no prob­lem with the sug­ges­tion, but in­vit­ed Shak to at­tend the next mem­ber­ship meet­ing where he could put for­ward his idea and be a part of the dis­cus­sion to re­move that shroud of se­cre­cy.He said Tu­co held be­tween five and six ex­ten­sive mem­ber­ship ses­sions be­fore Car­ni­val, where they en­ter­tained healthy dis­cus­sion on every­thing, in­clud­ing the whole ad­ju­di­ca­tion process, the sys­tem of judg­ing, the award of points, the cri­te­ria for judg­ing, the se­lec­tion of judges, and the com­po­si­tion of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee for ad­ju­di­ca­tion. He could not re­call if Shak at­tend­ed any of these ses­sions."The thing is, we have a process which is open and ac­ces­si­ble to all mem­bers and peo­ple should come to these ses­sions and make their con­tri­bu­tion."Say­ing he would wel­come any sug­ges­tion deal­ing with ad­ju­di­ca­tion, Re­sis­tance said the pub­lic dis­play of scores now be­ing put for­ward had been tried and re­ject­ed be­fore.

"That sys­tem Shak spoke about, we had that once, and the same mem­bers kicked up against it. That was some time be­fore 1998, when we just be­gan to use com­put­ers as part of the judg­ing process."If they want to go back to it, that would not be a prob­lem. Once the sug­ges­tion is put for­ward in the fo­rum, which is pro­vid­ed for that kind of sug­ges­tion to be made, we can en­ter­tain it.Speak­ing about the re­sults, which saw Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don emerg­ing the win­ner with his Weh Yuh Think and Wed­ding of De Cen­tu­ry, Re­sis­tance said he un­der­stood there would al­ways be dis­ap­point­ment where the judg­ing was con­cerned."It is vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to judge an art­form in the way we do, more so the ca­lyp­so art­form. It is or­gan­ic, it is so emo­tion­al, in every as­pect. The fact that we have a com­pe­ti­tion is mad­ness–but it is al­so part of the land­scape, so there­fore, how­ev­er, the re­sults come down, we have to take it as it is."We can't please every­body."

...No sour grapes

Mis­tah Shak as­sert­ed that while any­one will go in­to a com­pe­ti­tion to win, he has ab­solute­ly no grouse with his plac­ing third in the com­pe­ti­tion."I have no query, in so far as my po­si­tion­ing is con­cerned, even though there are ques­tions in the air. I am not con­cerned about that."My biggest con­cern is for the re­for­mat­ting of the judg­ing process and that is not even from a per­son­al per­spec­tive, be­cause I have no in­ten­tion of com­pet­ing or be­ing in com­pe­ti­tion for the ex­panse of du­ra­tion of how­ev­er long my ca­reer would go. At some point in time, I would step away from com­pet­ing."My con­cern is mak­ing sure that they bring greater trans­paren­cy to the judg­ing, for the sake of the art­form it­self and for the sake of the peo­ple who would be more in­vest­ed in the out­come of com­pe­ti­tions than I am, who are us­ing these com­pe­ti­tions as a yard­stick to val­i­date their progress."If it is not above board and it is not as smooth as pos­si­ble, it could cre­ate the ef­fect of de­ter­ing peo­ple or de­stroy­ing peo­ple's po­ten­tial to re­al­ly progress."

Dis­sent­ing voic­es have been raised about Chucky's Wed­ding se­lec­tion, with some say­ing it is not a true ca­lyp­so.

While com­ment­ing that it was the height of dis­re­spect for some­body to come and sing about the mar­riage of chut­ney and so­ca, where the chut­ney as­pect was more pro­nounced than the so­ca, at a com­pe­ti­tion cel­e­brat­ing 100 years of record­ed ca­lyp­so, Mis­tah Shak said he did not say Chucky's song was not a ca­lyp­so.

"I did not have any view as to whether Chucky's song was a true ca­lyp­so. I have no per­son­al is­sue with Chucky."