Pe­ter Ray Blood

There will be no mil­lion dol­lar first prize for the win­ner of this year's Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion and com­peti­tors can on­ly sing one song for Di­manche Gras.

These were among the changes ap­proved on Sat­ur­day, at an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing of Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co).

The meet­ing, which was chaired by Tu­co's pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Broth­er Re­sis­tance), vot­ed to re­duce ex­pen­di­ture across the board. The first prize for the 2017 Ca­lyp­so Monarch will now be $800,000.

The de­ci­sion is in keep­ing with a 25 per cent cut to al­lo­ca­tions to all Car­ni­val spe­cial in­ter­est groups.

The meet­ing, held at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion VIP room, Grand Stand, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, at­tract­ed the largest turnout of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans to a meet­ing in re­cent years.

At the meet­ing it was al­so agreed that the prize struc­ture of dif­fer­ent ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions will be dis­cussed and de­vel­oped by the or­gan­i­sa­tion's gen­er­al coun­cil.

Masim­ba urged ca­lyp­so tent own­ers/man­agers to be mind­ful of the cuts in al­lo­ca­tion when seek­ing cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship and en­gag­ing ser­vice providers. It is ex­pect­ed that ca­lyp­so­ni­ans will al­so get a cut in salary at all ca­lyp­so tents.

Sev­er­al oth­er sig­nif­i­cant changes were made to the na­tion­al ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion. In­stead of eight bards be­ing se­lect­ed to face the de­fend­ing monarch, 15 will be cho­sen to sing one se­lec­tion in­stead of the tra­di­tion­al two.

An­oth­er change is that the "ag­gre­gate" method of judg­ing, the pan­el com­pris­ing sev­en ad­ju­di­ca­tors, will be adopt­ed this year. This re­places the "spe­cial­ists sys­tem" which was utilised for the past five years, re­quir­ing 15 judges.

Masim­ba al­so an­nounced that a cat­e­go­ry fi­nal will be held, com­pris­ing Po­lit­i­cal, So­cial and Hu­mourous ca­lyp­soes, with win­ners of each re­ceiv­ing $25,000 in­stead of the $50,000 in years past.

Break­ing away from the tra­di­tion of a ca­lyp­son­ian "drop­ping a bomb" on the night of fi­nal com­pe­ti­tion with a new, un­heard song, the ca­lyp­so reg­is­tered for the Monarch com­pe­ti­tion by the com­peti­tor will be the on­ly ca­lyp­so that will be recog­nised for the com­pe­ti­tion.

This al­so means that ca­lyp­so­ni­ans whose songs did not find favour with the judges for the Skin­ner Park se­mi-fi­nal will not be per­mit­ted to per­form new songs in the un­at­tached elim­i­na­tions com­pe­ti­tions.

Sat­ur­day's meet­ing was de­scribed as well-dis­ci­plined and or­gan­ised one with mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly Garth St Clair, Du­ane O'Con­nor, Bal­ly, Broth­er J, King Soul and Mac, mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions from the floor.

Masim­ba told the gath­er­ing that one of Tu­co's prime ob­jec­tives is to make the or­gan­i­sa­tion en­tire­ly in­de­pen­dent.

Mind­ful of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Pan Trin­ba­go and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) now be­ing as­sumed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) in run­ning Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions, he urged the mem­ber­ship to work to­wards Tu­co stag­ing its own com­pe­ti­tions and events with­out any ex­ter­nal as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment.

Af­ter the meet­ing Tu­co's PRO Ras Kom­man­da (Steve Pas­call) told the T&T Guardian: "The ex­ec­u­tive would like to thank the en­tire mem­ber­ship for the ma­ture man­ner in which all these im­por­tant de­ci­sions were made and to en­sure them that de­spite what­ev­er ad­ver­si­ty that may con­front us we are quite ca­pa­ble to han­dle the chal­lenges."