Fyzabad-born Ronaldo London has been crowned the winner of this year’s Young Kings Calypso Competition at the Queen’s Park Savannah on Tuesday night after his début performance.
Despite lacking the flair and pizazz of elaborate stage props and costumes as many of his fellow contenders, London was able to win over the crowd and judges with the rendering of his song, Man’s Imagination.
His calypso was a commentary of how the imagination of mankind led to dark ambitions of greed and hate; something far from what God created him to be.
“Man start to imagine all kind of vague things, all kind of strange things. Imagine, man start to imagine all kind of evil plans against his fellow man. Man start to imagine that he is a superpower, a next man land he must conquer until he start to oppress man,” he sung.
His lyrics suggested that the only way this can be fixed is “if man learn to love man as they did in the master’s plan, man could stop the fall of man.”
In an interview with Guardian Media on Wednesday, the 21-year-old nephew of veteran calypsonian Brian London said: “I am feeling just the same as yesterday. Calm and just flowing like every other day. Winning this competition means nothing to me.”
He said he entered this competition to “share the message and give off energy to the younger generation so that one day they would do the same.”
“I am leading the future generation without fear. The younger generations don’t like competition.”
London said his mission is to change calypso from being confined to competition and get the genre to be recognised throughout the year. He said he also took part in the competition to show the elders that the younger generation would change everything soon.
“We have no choice, we have to enter to change things. Cannot sit back and think it will change, have to start with self,” he said via WhatsApp.
Tuesday night saw 16 contenders vying for the title of Young King at the Queen’s Park Savannah.
Last year saw a number of calypso icons passing such as The Mighty Shadow.
Many performers chose to pay their respects to him in their own way, either by mentioning him in their songs, donning his trademark black coat and hat or through pictures of him along with other passed legends cycling through the projector screen behind them.
Former National Junior Calypso Monarch Aaron Duncan, who placed 9th in the competition paid homage to all the calypsonians and artistes who paved the way for young artistes like himself in his song, Thank You.
As part of his performance, he brought on stage veteran calypsonian David Rudder.
Edward “D Billnah Man” Ramdass had the crowd’s full attention with his song Fix it Mr Griffith, an expression of confidence to the Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith.
“We know you could fix it,” Ramdass belted out as he paraded around the stage dressed in a camouflage jumper and accompanied by dancers dressed as police officers, prisoners, and the CoP. They portrayed the CoP arresting criminals and dancing as a slide show displaying images of the commissioner on duty played behind them.