Aba A Luke

A theme dubbed, En­er­gy In The City was re­vealed on Tues­day, as Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion for the Per­form­ing Arts un­leashed its plans for the In­ter­na­tion­al Groovy and So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion in 2011.The or­gan­i­sa­tion, which cel­e­brates 19 years of stag­ing the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, brought a num­ber of key fac­tors in­to fo­cus at it's launch at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.Among those present were the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, and Op­po­si­tion MP, Don­na Cox. Rep­re­sent­ing Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters, was Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the min­istry, Rawl­ins-Charles.

Reign­ing Pow­er Monarch and Road March ti­tle hold­ers, JW and Blaze, and reign­ing Groovy So­ca Monarch, Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter, along with fel­low so­ca stars Machel Mon­tano, Denise Bel­fon, Iw­er George, Patrice Roberts, Kees, Third Bass, and Ker­win DuBois all showed up to hear whether their names were among the list of semi­fi­nal­ists for the sec­ond round of com­pe­ti­tion on Feb­ru­ary 13.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd of­fers top notch­ex­po­sure

De­liv­er­ing fea­ture ad­dress­es were event spon­sors, Guardian Me­dia Ltd, which was rep­re­sent­ed by gen­er­al man­ag­er Steve J Dip­nar­ine, and ti­tle spon­sor, BMo­bile, who's VP Le­gal and EVP Mo­bile Ser­vices for TSTT.Lisa Agard high­light­ed that Car­ni­val and the BMo­bile In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­ued to be a cat­a­lyst for con­vert­ing raw tal­ent in­to en­ter­tain­ment show­pieces, that went on to spread the cul­ture of the is­land to the world at large.

Dip­nar­ine, in his ad­dress, ex­plained that Guardian Me­dia Ltd's in­clu­sion in the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion meant that the prod­uct had the ve­hi­cle to reach some 700,000 peo­ple each day via its ex­panse net­work of press, tele­vi­sion and ra­dio medi­ums. It was al­so high­light­ed that pro­mo­tion of the event and the artistes in­volved would span 194 re­gions across the world.

Big stars to vis­it T&T on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day

It is ex­pect­ed that the show, which is held on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day each year, will sur­pass those staged in pre­vi­ous years as the brand cel­e­brates its fi­nal teen year.Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez, ad­vi­sor to Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion's chair­man, William Munroe, high­light­ed the im­pact the show has had across the is­lands, as the So­ca Monarch brand is used at Car­ni­vals from St Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, and among oth­er is­lands of the di­as­po­ra.

Fern­ndez said this year's com­pe­ti­tion would be ex­treme­ly tough, adding that judges would have a hard time in mak­ing their de­ci­sions. He called on Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters to al­low room for more artistes to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the fi­nal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion, a re­quest that was sub­se­quent­ly re­it­er­at­ed by Munroe him­self.Fer­nan­dez ac­knowl­edged the Prime Min­is­ter's ini­tia­tive in of­fer­ing a $2 mil­lion award to first place win­ners of all the ma­jor Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions. He said this year's So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion would be ded­i­cat­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter, and $3 dol­lars on every tick­et sold, would be do­nat­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter's Chil­dren's Life Fund.

Fer­nan­dez made men­tion of some of the stars who would be grac­ing lo­cal shores for the com­pe­ti­tion-among them, BET's The Game ac­tors, Raquel Roberts and Jose Sanchez. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Fer­nan­dez said Idris El­bar of the movie Dad­dy's Lit­tle Girls would be a spe­cial guest at the event on March 4.Fer­nan­dez stepped on some toes, lash­ing out at DJ and ra­dio per­son­al­i­ties who en­tered the so­ca are­na on­ly to switch back to play­ing oth­er gen­res of mu­sic af­ter Car­ni­val.

Prime Min­is­ter­calls for Artis­te­Health Fund

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Biss­esar, in her ad­dress, called on the or­gan­i­sa­tion to in­ject the $3 dol­lar do­na­tion spo­ken of for the Chil­dren's Life Fund or part there­of, in­to a fund for artistes who are con­front­ed by ill­ness as they age.The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged the re­quest for the $2 mil­lion dol­lars to be a con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tion from the gov­ern­ment, and as­sured that, "As long as the econ­o­my per­mits, the prize mon­ey will re­main the same."The event end­ed on a high note, with the reign­ing mon­archs thank­ing the body for the op­por­tu­ni­ty they've been af­ford­ed in the past year.The semi­fi­nal round of com­pe­ti­tion takes place from 6am at Ari­ma Velo­drome on Feb­ru­ary 13.

GROOVY SE­MI-FI­NAL­ISTS

Mr Ren­zo

Na­dia Bat­son

Denise "Saucy Wow" Bel­fon

Ravi B

Su­per Jig­ga TC

Sug­ar J

Lil Bits

Swap­pi

Kees

Ri­car­do Drew

Ker­win DuBois

Zan

Nni­ka Fran­cis

De­stra Gar­cia

Chucky

Yan­kee Boy & Patch

All Rounder

Ben­jai

Shal Mar­shal

Lyrikal

Jah­moun

Or­lan­do Oc­tave

Patrice Roberts

Mr Dale

Kim­ba Sorzano

Blaxx

Cas­si

Megan Wal­dron

POW­ER SE­MI-FI­NAL­ISTS

Bun­ji Gar­lin

Er­phaan Alves

Crazy

Na­dia/

Patrice

Ravi B

Zu­ki and Tim Tim

Tall­pree

Kevin Ce­les­tine

Lil Bits

Ghet­to Flex

De­stra Gar­cia

Iw­er George

C'Do­nia

Im­ij and Co-

Michelle Xavier

Patch

Fay Ann Lyons

Ter­ri Lyons

Shal Mar­shal

King Kon­ris

Machel Mon­tano HD

Denyse Plum­mer

Tony Prescott

Mad­dZart

Princess Adana

Pelf

Blaxx

Ajala

Megan

Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter