Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Aaron Dun­can and Akeem “Preedy” Chance are among the 16 fi­nal­ists who will seek to de­throne Squeezy Rankin (An­tho­ny La Fleur) in this year’s Young Kings com­pe­ti­tion.

This is the first time in the com­pe­ti­tion’s 40-year his­to­ry that a semi­fi­nal round was held, af­ter 31 artistes threw their hats in­to the ring. Pre­vi­ous win­ners of the com­pe­ti­tion in­clude Cro Cro, David Rud­der and Watch­man.

The ca­lyp­so­ni­ans con­verged at the John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day evening, where judges faced the dif­fi­cult task of nar­row­ing the field to 16.

Niklas Shashie Go­sine, known as St Nick, wooed an ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence with his ren­di­tion of Trib­ute to Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. His of­fer­ing placed on a pedestal icons such as Mighty Spar­row and Lord Kitch­en­er, as well as the “Sweet So­ca Man”, Baron, whom Go­sine close­ly re­sem­bles in style.

Mr Fa­mous (Ju­nior Noel) made the fi­nal cut with Africa Ris­ing, in which he praised no­table de­scen­dants of Africa, in­clud­ing late Trinidad and To­ba­go prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Guardian Me­dia sports jour­nal­ist Cas­ton Cu­pid was al­so se­lect­ed among the fi­nal­ists with his wit­ty of­fer­ing, Robert Ball, a so­cial com­men­tary on cor­rup­tion af­fect­ing the coun­try, even at the high­est lev­els.

How­ev­er, there was no room for string band per­for­mances, with the Klas­sic Ru­so duo of Mark East­man and Kyle Cowie fail­ing to ad­vance.

In­stead, the tent will be rep­re­sent­ed by An­dre Nel­son and Mas­ter Deane, who per­formed Yuh Cyah Stop the Mu­sic and Doh Put Mi Dey, re­spec­tive­ly.

Al­so ad­vanc­ing is Ny­ol Man­swell, bet­ter known for his ex­tem­po ex­ploits.

The semi­fi­nal show­cased a strong mix of hu­mour, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, in­clud­ing a stand­out per­for­mance from Sher­win Babb (Be­com­er), who de­liv­ered Voice Mail to Kam­la, out­lin­ing his con­cerns and rec­om­men­da­tions for the good of the coun­try.

The oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who will con­test the ti­tle cur­rent­ly held by Squeezy Rank­ing are: Aaron Dun­can (Birth­place), Akeem “Preedy” Chance (Jam­ming), Dar­ween “Pharoah” Greenidge (B Sharpe), Dave “P8tri­ot” Maikoo (Moth­er Mu­sic), Kadeem Gra­ham (A Bet­ter Way), Marq Pierre (How Yuh Feel­ing), Nicholas “Nikko Ash” Ash­by (Spe­cial Arrange­ment), Os­car “Os­car B” Ben­jamin (AI ver­sus Man), and Ri­val­do Lon­don (Wa­ter Thick­er).

The Young Kings com­pe­ti­tion was first held in 1985, with Lu­ta (Morel Pe­ters) crowned the in­au­gur­al Young King with The Eng­lish Lan­guage and Beau­ty Con­tests. At that time, con­tes­tants were re­quired to per­form two ca­lyp­sos.

In 1995, Wayne Mod­este (Im­pulse) be­came the first one-song win­ner with Shad­ow Jumbie.

The reign­ing Young King is Squeezy Rankin, who won with Jus­tice. He will not be de­fend­ing his crown, as past win­ners are not el­i­gi­ble to com­pete in sub­se­quent edi­tions.