Sean Nero

The Trin­i­ty Col­lege So­ka In Mo­ka or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee was de­ter­mined not to be jinxed by the num­ber 13, so they pulled out all the stops and suc­ceed­ed in pro­duc­ing a mem­o­rable So­ka In Mo­ka XI­II Car­ni­val all-in­clu­sive last Sun­day. Fun-lovers re­moved the in­clement weath­er from their thoughts and jour­neyed to Mo­ka, Mar­aval, to be among the thou­sands, many with um­brel­las, at­tend­ing the event chuck full of great mu­sic, food and at­mos­phere. But those were among the ob­vi­ous and wel­comed hap­pen­ings. It was the un­ex­pect­ed and ex­cit­ing rev­e­la­tions, how­ev­er, that en­thralled the au­di­ence start­ing with the de­ci­sion by Roy Cape All Stars lead vo­cal­ist Blaxx (Dex­ter Stew­art) to un­veil his mil­i­tary styled hair cut.

Pa­trons knew there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about Blaxx when he took the stage, but they couldn't quite place their fin­gers on it, be­ing part­ly blind­ed by the light­ing de­sign. He then re­moved the riv­er is­land flat cap and wowed pa­trons, women par­tic­u­lar­ly, with his new look. "How I look­ing?" he asked, smil­ing. "Hand­some," replied a fe­male pa­tron. Her re­sponse was shared by oth­er fe­males at the event as com­mu­ni­cat­ed in their re­spons­es.

Next to Blaxx was Ri­car­do Drue, who was mak­ing his de­but with the band fol­low­ing his de­par­ture from Im­ij and Com­pa­ny. Drue seemed quite com­fort­able per­form­ing un­der the new ban­ner. More im­por­tant­ly, he added val­ue to its qual­i­ty mu­si­cal out­pour­ing. Mean­while, for­mer In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch Ron­nie Mc In­tosh re­turned to the stage along­side Dil-e-Nadan, and had pa­trons laud­ing his re­turn. He treat­ed pa­trons to a string of his pre­vi­ous hits. There was no deny­ing that So­ka In Mo­ka XI­II gave pa­trons val­ue for mon­ey, start­ing with the A-list en­ter­tain­ment line-up. Apart from Roy Cape All Stars and Dil-e-Nadan, Car­ni­val lovers were treat­ed to the of­fer­ings of sin­gle pan band World-Wide, Ker­win Du Bois and Patrice Roberts, Ben­jai and of course reign­ing Play Whe Groovy Monarch Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller and his band, Kes on the show­case host­ed by JW and Nik­ki Cros­by.

But an­oth­er con­sumer high­light was the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee's de­ci­sion vi­sion to con­tin­ue tweak­ing the lay­out to the max­i­mum ben­e­fit of its clien­tele. Con­scious that the Chi­nese food sta­tion was usu­al­ly over­sub­scribed, the event pro­duc­er con­struct­ed an el­e­vat­ed serv­ing sta­tion, with sep­a­rate en­trance and ex­it built for com­fort and safe­ty, too. While await­ing their meal pa­trons re­alised two things: they had a bird's eye view of the stage and got a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the pris­tine lay­out of the Trin­i­ty Col­lege com­pound that was prepped for their added en­joy­ment.

Even the booth host­ing Ex­cel­len­cies Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and wife Jean was el­e­vat­ed. Hav­ing set an en­vi­ous stan­dard for Car­ni­val all-in­clu­sive fetes this sea­son which has five more weeks to go, pa­trons were al­ready ex­press­ing ex­cite­ment about So­ka In Mo­ka in 2013.