Cherisse Moe

So­ca heavy­weight Machel Mon­tano with his band HD and Ja­maican sen­sa­tion Shag­gy walked away with the li­on's share of the awards at the An­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Reg­gae and World Mu­sic Awards (IRAW­MA) held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day evening. Mon­tano, who was among the show's top win­ners for the last three con­sec­u­tive years, copped five awards-Best Male Ca­lyp­so/So­ca En­ter­tain­er, Best Caribbean En­ter­tain­er, Best Out­stand­ing Stage Per­son­al­i­ty, Most Out­stand­ing Show Band and Best So­ca Band.

Shag­gy, whose re­al name is Orville Richard Bur­rell, bagged three prizes-The Mar­cus Gar­vey Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Award, Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Award and the pres­ti­gious Bob Mar­ley Award for En­ter­tain­er of the Year. Mean­while, Chut­ney star Rik­ki Jai and Chut­ney Band Dil-e-Nadan, who were cho­sen via pub­lic and bmo­bile text votes, copped Best Chut­ney artiste and Best Chut­ney group, re­spec­tive­ly. It was the first time that the Chut­ney cat­e­gories were added to the list. An­oth­er new cat­e­go­ry was Best Steel­band which went to 2009 Panora­ma champs Sil­ver Stars. And the an­nounce­ment that so­ca artiste Iw­er George won the Most Im­proved Artiste award was greet­ed by loud gasps and laugh­ter from the crowd.

Pa­trons were heard say­ing "What!" and "Oh my God!" George was not present to ac­cept his award. The show, sched­uled to be­gin at 7 pm, got un­der way at about 8.15 pm and was host­ed by Ja­maican artistes Tony Rebel, Shag­gy and US singer, De­niece Williams. The crowd was treat­ed to per­for­mances from a di­verse crop of en­ter­tain­ers, in­clud­ing Mon­tano, Isidore "Mighty Dow" York, who was in­duct­ed in­to the IRAW­MA Hall of Fame, So­ca Elvis, Tar­rus Ri­ley and Gen­er­al Grant. T&T got the nod over 30 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Ghana and Nige­ria to host the red-car­pet af­fair for the first time. The award cer­e­mo­ny, how­ev­er, failed to at­tract a large crowd and there were many emp­ty seats at the NA­PA.

Pro­duc­er/pres­i­dent Ephraim Mar­tin had ear­li­er es­ti­mat­ed that 5,000 guests would at­tend.

A co-or­di­na­tor told the T&T Guardian that "about 900 peo­ple" at­tend­ed. More than 80 per cent of lo­cal and re­gion­al nom­i­nees and award re­cip­i­ents were ab­sent, forc­ing oth­ers to ac­cept the awards on their be­half. Spe­cial awards were giv­en to co­me­di­an Den­nis "Spran­galang" Hall, en­tre­pre­neur Tony Chow and Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters, who copped a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. They were al­so ab­sent. Busi­ness­man and for­mer pro­duc­er, Robert Amar, who was on hand to ac­cept his spe­cial award, said while he was hap­py to be recog­nised for his con­tri­bu­tion, he was dis­ap­point­ed that his "own peo­ple" failed to ap­pre­ci­ate his ac­com­plish­ments. "It's a bit­ter-sweet night, be­cause this home­land has nev­er paid me the kind of homage that this for­eign en­ti­ty has paid me," he said.

The show end­ed at 11.20 pm with some pa­trons call­ing it "an OK event."

Oth­er awardees in­clud­ed:

• De­stra-Best Fe­male En­ter­tain­er (ab­sent).

• Buffy-Best New En­ter­tain­er (ab­sent).

• Ker­nel Roberts-Song­writer of the Year (ab­sent).

• Fred­dy Mc­Gre­gor and Mighty Spar­row-Most con­sis­tent en­ter­tain­er (ab­sent).

• Rhi­an­na-Most pop­u­lar Hip Hop Artiste (ab­sent).