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Monday, July 14, 2025

Ca­lyp­so Monarch pays trib­ute to men­tors

11-time finalist takes the crown

by

20160208

Af­ter 11 at­tempts at try­ing to cap­ture the Ca­lyp­so Monarch crown, De­von Seale yes­ter­day snatched the cov­et­ed ti­tle and $1 mil­lion first prize from his 11 ri­vals.

Seale, who sang Spir­it of Car­ni­val and Re­spect God's Voice, de­throned de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Rod­er­ick "Chuck" Gor­don at the Di­manche Gras show, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, be­fore a half-filled Grand Stand.

Plac­ing sec­ond and tak­ing home $500,000 in the 2016 Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals was 22-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T stu­dent and new­com­er to the stage Helon Fran­cis who de­liv­ered Par­adise and Re­al Ban­dits, which were well-re­ceived by spec­ta­tors. Fran­cis al­so copped the Young King ti­tle in the Na­tion­al Ac­tion Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee's com­pe­ti­tion last month.

Gor­don, who was aim­ing for his hat-trick, had to set­tle for third po­si­tion and $250,000 af­ter ren­der­ing Fix­ing Time and It Eh Go Wuk.

A to­tal of $2,420,000 in prize mon­ey will be dis­trib­uted to the 12 fi­nal­ists.

The theme for this year's show was en­ti­tled Un­for­get­table–The Sound­track of your Life.

As Seale was bod­i­ly lift­ed in­to the air by ju­bi­lant and scream­ing sup­port­ers, friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers, he paid trib­ute to the late Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts), Car­lyle "Jazzy" Pan­tin and Lord Pre­tender (Aldric Far­rell) for his vic­to­ry.

He said these three men gave him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to au­di­tion and sing.

"They al­ways gave me ad­vice and pushed me to the lim­it. I will for­ev­er be in­debt­ed to them," Seale said af­ter be­ing crowned.

In 1999, Seale made his de­but in the Ka­lyp­so Re­vue tent man­aged by Lord Kitch­en­er.

"I feel won­der­ful. I feel great. I have been toil­ing for years. Last year I put in a lot of work on stage but I dis­ap­point­ed my fans with my sec­ond song. I had to come back and take what I gave away. It just shows that hard work and per­sis­tence pay off. When it's your time, it's your time," a smil­ing Seale said.

Seale ad­mit­ted that many of his com­peti­tors had com­pelling songs.

"I think the judges got it right with the top five places."

In con­grat­u­lat­ing his ri­vals, 39-year-old Seale sin­gled out Fran­cis who is his first cousin.

"For us it's a dou­ble cel­e­bra­tion tonight. Helon had two dy­nam­ic songs. The sky is the lim­it for him. He has a lot of po­ten­tial and will cer­tain­ly go far with his voice and tal­ent," Seale said.

He said with artistes like Fran­cis, ca­lyp­so was in safe hands.

What was the se­cret to Seale's suc­cess?

"I think my songs were well-ex­e­cut­ed and bal­anced. They were of the right mix."

Hav­ing sung ca­lyp­so for the past 20 years, Seale said, he was for­tu­nate to be a Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal­ist 11 times, but vic­to­ry al­ways elud­ed him.

The clos­est he came to win­ning the crown was sec­ond.

"I have been knock­ing on the door of the monar­chy for 11 years. Last year I placed sec­ond. Now it has fi­nal­ly opened. Vic­to­ry at last!"

Seale said this year he went back to the draw­ing board and came with a dif­fer­ent con­cept and plan, which worked in his favour.

In­stead of singing strict­ly po­lit­i­cal com­men­taries, Seale changed the choice of his songs a bit.

He opt­ed to de­liv­er Re­spect God's Voice–a po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary writ­ten by Mar­lon Ron­don–and an up­tem­po ca­lyp­so en­ti­tled The Spir­it of Car­ni­val penned by Christophe Grant.

Re­spect God's Voice tells of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's de­ci­sion to file elec­tion pe­ti­tions to de­clare the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion null and void.

Seale urged for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­spect the voice of the peo­ple who vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies of Tu­na­puna, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, San Fer­nan­do West and St Joseph.

Seale de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a sore los­er and ac­cused the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship of plun­der­ing the Trea­sury dur­ing their term in of­fice.

"Thank God to­day in the Sa­van­nah the voice of the peo­ple was the voice of God. The peo­ple de­cid­ed that I had to take this 2016 monarch."

In the sec­ond round of the com­pe­ti­tion, Seale, dressed as a blue dev­il armed with a fork in his right hand, of­fered pa­trons an up­beat ca­lyp­so, which he said had been lack­ing in the com­pe­ti­tion.

He said in years gone by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans such as Ex­plain­er, Spar­row and Scrunter en­ter­tained pa­trons at the Big Yard with a par­ty song, which he rein­tro­duced on stage to en­ter­tain the crowd.

The for­mer TSTT em­ploy­ee who owns an In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy/se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness plans to in­vest some of his win­nings in­to his busi­ness.

He al­so plans to host a show cel­e­brat­ing his 20 years in the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty.


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