DAVID CUFFY

First Cit­i­zens and the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL) have re­newed sup­port for the sec­ond edi­tion of the Cor­po­rate Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion, orig­i­nal­ly staged as the Cor­po­rate King of Kings, that takes place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, (NA­PA), Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day, from 6 pm. A pro­duc­tion is of the Vin­tage Kaiso Brigade led by An­drew "Lord Su­pe­ri­or" Mar­cano, and will fea­ture 18 win­ners of the cor­po­rate sec­tor ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions held this year. They will com­pete for more than $100,000 in prize mon­ey.

"We are par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful for the re­turn of First Cit­i­zens which sup­port­ed us in the in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion last year, and wel­come back, as well, GISL which will be car­ry­ing the pro­gramme live on Chan­nel 4 on Sun­day, and Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB)," said Su­pe­ri­or.

Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions in the cor­po­rate sec­tor dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son have tak­en firm root on the en­ter­tain­ment land­scape, and con­tin­ue to be a rich source of en­joy­ment for both com­peti­tors and au­di­ence mem­bers. Pop­u­lar­ly re­ferred to as "In-House Ca­lyp­so Con­tests," ear­ly pro­duc­ers of these ea­ger­ly looked for­ward to events in­clude the T&T Guardian, Har­vard Sports Club, Roy­al Bank, Petrotrin, TATIL, Queen's Park Crick­et Club, Re­pub­lic Bank, WASA, and Carib Brew­ery, to name a few. The con­tests have spawned some of to­day's pop­u­lar bards, in­clu­sive of David Bereaux, Hol­lis Wright, Dirty Cur­ty, Nin­ja, Roy­al Ben­ji, Doppy, and a few oth­ers.

Four of last year's con­tes­tants will be re­turn­ing to com­pete, hav­ing re­peat­ed their vic­to­ries in their re­spec­tive com­pa­nies' con­tests. In ad­di­tion, a fa­ther and son, each rep­re­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent cor­po­rate en­ti­ty will be in the fray, along with two joint win­ners (fe­males) from a State cor­po­ra­tion. The youngest com­peti­tor this year is 18 years old. In­au­gur­al win­ner Ke­vaughn Me­dine of Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) is ex­pect­ed to de­fend his ti­tle, al­though he did not win his com­pa­ny's con­test this year. Mak­ing guest ap­pear­ances on the pro­gramme will be Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Du­ane O'Con­nor and Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po Cham­pi­on Leslie-Ann "La­dy Africa" Bris­tow. Last year's spon­sors in­clud­ed the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, First Cit­i­zens Bank, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co), Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL), Boom Cham­pi­ons 94.1 FM, Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) and Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.