KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter a suc­cess­ful de­but last year, Car­ni­val will un­fold with­out the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on (USC), a com­pe­ti­tion or­gan­is­ers say helped pro­pel emerg­ing artistes on­to na­tion­al stages but has now been shelved due to a lack of fund­ing and of­fi­cial sup­port.

Founder and pro­duc­er Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la said that or­gan­is­ers ap­proached the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) for as­sis­tance, but had re­ceived no re­sponse up to yes­ter­day. With less than three weeks re­main­ing be­fore Car­ni­val, he said there is no longer enough time to stage the com­pe­ti­tion, even if fund­ing were ap­proved now.

The ab­sence of the USC was con­firmed when it did not ap­pear on the NCC’s 2026 cal­en­dar of events, re­leased on De­cem­ber 16. Re­ports in­di­cat­ed that Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin had ac­knowl­edged re­ceiv­ing feed­back from the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and said dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing. She ex­plained that the 2025 edi­tion of USC was fa­cil­i­tat­ed through a ten­der­ing process and that a con­tract had been drawn up. Ben­jamin al­so said com­mit­tee mem­bers were ex­pect­ed to meet with her more than a week ago to make a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion on whether the State would sup­port the event for Car­ni­val 2026.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Pre­cil­la said, “We will not have the com­pe­ti­tion this year, and we are hop­ing to have the com­pe­ti­tion next year once we get the sup­port from the Min­istry and the NCC to pull it off, be­cause we think that it is some­thing that is need­ed for the artistes them­selves. They have been beg­ging for it. Every time I go some­where, back­stage, artistes are ask­ing, ‘Is the com­pe­ti­tion on?’”

In­tro­duced for Car­ni­val 2025, the USC reimag­ined the for­mat with a sin­gle uni­fied ti­tle, re­plac­ing the tra­di­tion­al Pow­er and Groovy cat­e­gories. Grena­da’s Bla­ka Dan emerged as the in­au­gur­al cham­pi­on, se­cur­ing the $1 mil­lion prize. Su­cre took the Youth ti­tle.

Pre­cil­la de­scribed the can­cel­la­tion as a set­back for or­gan­is­ers and per­form­ers, not­ing that USC was de­signed as a de­vel­op­men­tal plat­form. De­spite its sin­gle out­ing, he said the com­pe­ti­tion pro­duced tan­gi­ble re­sults.

Giv­ing some youth ex­am­ples, he said Su­cre has since be­come a front­line singer with the Evo­lu­tion band and scored a hit this sea­son and Paris Coutain, who did not place in the Youth cat­e­go­ry, lat­er se­cured a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Machel Mon­tano af­ter show­cas­ing her tal­ent, while Ani­ka Berry has be­come a con­sis­tent pres­ence in this year’s Car­ni­val.

Pre­cil­la said artistes were in­formed through word of mouth, as or­gan­is­ers did not want to cre­ate un­nec­es­sary ten­sion. The re­sponse, how­ev­er, was dis­ap­point­ment, with many ques­tion­ing why a com­pe­ti­tion they viewed as es­sen­tial failed to se­cure back­ing.

“We re­al­ly did not have an an­swer for them oth­er than ‘we re­al­ly did not get the sup­port that we thought we would have got­ten, so we were not able to pull it off on our own.’ With­out Gov­ern­ment sup­port for things like these, es­pe­cial­ly in its for­ma­tive stages, it would be dif­fi­cult to pull off, es­pe­cial­ly in the time­frame in which we re­al­ly have not heard any­thing from the min­istry as to what is hap­pen­ing.”

He said plat­forms such as ISM and Syn­er­gy So­ca Star his­tor­i­cal­ly served as launch­pads for young artistes, many of whom lat­er tran­si­tioned to in­ter­na­tion­al stages.

So­ca artiste Chris­to, whose re­al name is Jah­mike Bonas, yes­ter­day said the USC played a key role in el­e­vat­ing his pro­file.

“I was dis­ap­point­ed when I heard that they did not get a bud­get for this year be­cause I was re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to it and its vibes and get­ting my face more known,” he said.

The USC was wide­ly re­gard­ed as a suc­ces­sor to the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM), which ran an­nu­al­ly from 1993 to 2020 as one of Car­ni­val’s pre­mier com­pe­ti­tions. The ISM moved to a vir­tu­al for­mat in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing en­tire­ly from 2022 to 2024 amid lin­ger­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

Or­gan­is­ers re­main hope­ful the com­pe­ti­tion will re­turn in 2027 with gov­ern­ment and pri­vate-sec­tor sup­port. Ef­forts to reach Ben­jamin for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.