In one of its many ef­forts to sup­port T&T's unique and ef­fer­ves­cent cul­ture, mo­bile car­ri­er bmo­bile has once again pulled out all the stops to bring bour­geon­ing mu­sic tal­ent to the fore­front via the pop­u­lar bmo­bile Syn­er­gy TV So­ca Star com­pe­ti­tion.Now in its sev­enth year, this an­nu­al Christ­mas in­to Car­ni­val sea­son sta­ple is back with a bang and po­si­tioned to put a new batch of hope­fuls through a vir­tu­al mu­sic in­dus­try wringer in or­der for one lucky win­ner to re­alise his/her dreams of so­ca star­dom.

So­ca Star, which is of­ten re­ferred to as the so­ca world's an­swer to TV show-com­pe­ti­tions such as Amer­i­can Idol, has been re­spon­si­ble for not on­ly pro­vid­ing a fo­rum for new en­ter­tain­ers to shine but for giv­ing in­sight in­to the in­tri­ca­cies of ex­e­cut­ing this in­dige­nous art form.

Past win­ners of this com­pe­ti­tion in­clude Metro, OG, Blue, Chynee and Ras Star.For­mer con­tes­tants Megan Wal­rond and Kim­ba Sorzano have gone on to see suc­cess in their re­spec­tive record­ing and per­for­mance ca­reers, while sea­son two win­ner Umi Mar­cano has re­leased sev­er­al hit songs and videos, as well as shared the stage with so­ca king Machel Mon­tano as part of the HD Band. Most no­tably, sea­son one cham­pi­on, Ro­han "Fire­ball" Richards went on to top in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic charts with his mon­ster track What I Want.

Lisa Agard, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, bmo­bile Ser­vices, not­ed that the com­pa­ny was ho­n­oured to have played a sig­nif­i­cant role over the years in all these So­ca Star suc­cess sto­ries and they view their in­volve­ment in this com­pe­ti­tion as a more than just be­ing the ti­tle spon­sor."Rather, we see this as an on­go­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to go be­yond the realm of cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and to a make a se­ri­ous in­vest­ment to­wards en­sur­ing that the so­ca genre thrives through the fos­ter­ing of new gen­er­a­tions of per­form­ers."

Sea­son sev­en of bmo­bile Syn­er­gy TV So­ca Star fea­tures a whole new vibe to the se­ries, com­plete with a new host in the form of ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Mr Smooth, new judges: Su­per Jig­ga TC, Na­dia Bat­son and pro­duc­er Daryl Brax­ton and a se­ries of new chal­lenges, train­ing ses­sions, team-build­ing ini­tia­tives and so­ca boot camps.The pub­lic got the chance to see the new faces in ac­tion at the first live show on No­vem­ber 12 at the St James Am­phithe­atre.