Pe­ter Ray Blood

Take a bow William Munro for stag­ing the best or­gan­ised In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion, cel­e­brat­ing its 20th an­niver­sary this year. Staged at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain on Car­ni­val Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 17, the event at­tract­ed thou­sands to wit­ness the dou­ble coro­na­tion of Machel Mon­tano as the Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch and Play Whe Groovy So­ca Monarch. While I found the Groovy So­ca fi­nal to be the best ever held, se­lec­tions in the Pow­er So­ca seg­ment left much to be de­sired and it was the weak­est of 20 fi­nals staged, es­pe­cial­ly where the for­eign fi­nal­ists were con­cerned. Machel was out­stand­ing in both cat­e­gories and de­serves his win. Al­so im­press­ing me were Prophet Ben­jamin (De­von Samuel), es­pe­cial­ly for be­ing a first-timer, and the first Bobo Shan­ti to com­pete in a ca­lyp­so/so­ca fi­nal; and Ben­jai (Rod­ney Le Blanc), the lat­ter per­form­ing Peo­ple's Cham­pi­on, one of the most in­fec­tious songs this year. On the top­ic of in­fec­tious songs this Car­ni­val aside from the top three in the Road March com­pe­ti­tion, Ben­jamin's and Ben­jai's, al­so catch­ing my fan­cy were Take Yuh Time (Ben­jai); Sin­gle (KI); Buck­et and Bub­ble on a DJ (Swap­pi); So and So and Ir­reg­u­lar (Bun­ji); All Over (Fay Ann & Baron); Shiv­er (Na­dia Bat­son); In Your Eyes (Er­phaan Alves); Over You (Kim­ba Sorzano); No­body Bad­der Dan We (Shur­wayne); and, Sur­ren­der and You Make Me (Farmer Nap­py).

Machel's dou­ble crown pro­vid­ed much im­pe­tus for his Road March vic­to­ry with his song Pump Yuh Flag; a re­sound­ing and com­pre­hen­sive rout of a Car­ni­val sea­son if ever there was one. Con­trary to those peo­ple who think that he should re­tire from com­pe­ti­tion I beg to re­spect­ful­ly dif­fer. No­body asked Spar­row, Kitch­en­er, Su­perBlue, Min­shall, Berke­ley or Pe­ter Samuel to re­tire when no­body could beat them; no­body has asked Bri­an Mac Far­lane to quit now that he has reg­is­tered his sixth win in the Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tion. So, why must Machel Mon­tano re­tire from com­pe­ti­tion? The So­ca Monarch and Road March, and Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tions are open con­tests, so any­one wish­ing to beat Machel or Mac Far­lane had bet­ter come bet­ter than they have come be­fore. No­body eh sen' and in­vite yuh in big peo­ple ting; so shape up or ship out. Back to So­ca Monarch, one of the pos­i­tives was the treat­ment of the dis­abled spec­ta­tors at­tend­ing the show. I saw with my own eyes, at­ten­dants out­side the cov­er stands at the sta­di­um read­i­ly as­sist­ing para­plegics in­to the venue.

Or­gan­is­ers are al­so de­serv­ing of full marks for se­cu­ri­ty in and out of the venue, es­pe­cial­ly in the VVIP area. This des­ig­nat­ed space was the largest I've ever seen re­served as a VVIP area, and I was im­pressed that it of­fered every colour of John­ny Walk­er Black avail­able, as well as a de­lec­table din­ner. I even over­heard one pa­tron re­mark­ing at around 3 am on Sat­ur­day: "Is de bess all-in­clu­sive ah went to this Car­ni­val," no doubt im­pressed that the black hue of John­ny was still eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

The Best 5 Par­ties

I didn't at­tend as many par­ties as I am ac­cus­tomed to as I had much more oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to at­tend to this sea­son past. How­ev­er, of those I at­tend­ed I have sin­gled out my Best 5-UWI, Es­cape to Playa del Este, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, ONE, Old Hi­lar­i­ans.

I must al­so men­tion that St Mary's Col­lege's Fet­ing With the Saints has im­proved great­ly and that all-in­clu­sive par­ties host­ed by St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege and Bel­mont Sec­ondary are on the thresh­old of reach­ing the top.

The mask of...

My play­ing mas ex­pe­ri­ence was a night­mare caus­ing my Car­ni­val to be bit­ter-sweet. Hav­ing en­joyed all the fetes and pan, the mas was an­ti­cli­mac­tic. I played mas, for the eighth con­sec­u­tive year with Tribe, now un­fair­ly brand­ed as "the delin­quent, rebel band." Some­thing dras­tic has to be done about the pa­rade route and the bur­geon­ing quan­tum of mas­quer­ade bands ex­pect­ed to tra­verse it on the two days of Car­ni­val. The on­ly street in POS large enough to be used as an artery to the QPS is Char­lotte Street, not Hen­ry, Fred­er­ick or Aber­crom­by. Cipri­ani Boule­vard, be­cause of its width al­so needs to be a part of the pa­rade route. All bands must ad­here to the rules de­cid­ed up­on by the NC­BA mem­ber­ship pri­or to Car­ni­val, so go­ing east along Tra­garete Road is a def­i­nite no no for any band as it's sup­posed to be one way-west bound. The NCC/NC­BA must come up with an al­ter­na­tive plan for the pa­rade, per­haps al­lot­ting spe­cif­ic days for spe­cif­ic bands to pa­rade along spe­cif­ic routes and venues, and nev­er con­tra­ven­ing such arrange­ment. Per­haps bands not com­pet­ing in the Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tion, like Tribe and Harts Int, need to have al­ter­na­tive dis­play venues away from the Pa­rade of the Bands com­pe­ti­tion venues. Per­haps open up the routes to ex­tend west of the city, to­wards St James and Mu­cu­rapo, The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and its SIGs have less than one year to plan for C2K13 as Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day fall ear­li­er, on Feb­ru­ary 11-12.

And in com­ple­tion

I must speak out both sides of my mouth when it comes to prais­ing the po­lice ser­vice for main­tain­ing law and or­der on both days of Car­ni­val as much is left to be de­sired of the peren­ni­al prob­lem of crowd con­trol at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, and along some streets, es­pe­cial­ly Ari­api­ta Av­enue in­to Park Street. Out in its num­ber, the po­lice force was ef­fec­tive this year, pro­tect­ing and serv­ing, but what goes on at QPS on the Drag and in Wood­brook is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. Why can't spec­ta­tors be kept on the pave­ment to al­low the smooth flow of bands and mas­quer­aders? And, what ever hap­pened to the good old days of con­struct­ing a phys­i­cal bar­ri­er be­tween bleach­ers and grounds along the Drag in the QPS? Had prop­er polic­ing been in force on Tues­day night at the QPS, the stab­bing in­ci­dent would have nev­er hap­pened and hun­dreds of scam­per­ing mas­quer­aders would not have been placed in harm's way.