Liv­ing up to its rep­u­ta­tion as a sea­son of bac­cha­nal, Car­ni­val 2025 is al­ready gen­er­at­ing de­bates and con­tro­ver­sies.

Com­ments by Hin­di Foun­da­tion chair­man Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo about the qual­i­ty of chut­ney so­ca mu­sic are al­ready get­ting push­back from artistes and pro­mot­ers. How­ev­er, his con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms about the mu­sic’s in­flu­ence on East In­di­an cul­ture are valid and wor­thy of fur­ther dis­cus­sion.

The cur­rent scruti­ny of the genre, a rapid­ly evolv­ing off­shoot of ca­lyp­so and so­ca, is to be ex­pect­ed and is key to its con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment.

While there might be valid con­cerns about the ma­te­r­i­al from some artistes, it is im­por­tant to al­so high­light the progress that has been made in the chut­ney so­ca are­na over the years.

The mu­sic, once en­joyed on­ly by diehard fans in T&T, Suri­name and Guyana, now has a much wider reach, main­ly due to the suc­cess of the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch (CSM) com­pe­ti­tion, now in its 30th year.

There­fore, it is im­por­tant to com­mend the ef­forts and in­vest­ments of Southex CEO George Singh and all the oth­er pro­mot­ers, artistes and spon­sors who have con­tributed to mak­ing CSM one of the ma­jor events of the Car­ni­val sea­son.

That mile­stone is among the many ac­com­plish­ments be­ing cel­e­brat­ed as tal­ent­ed T&T artistes, ex­po­nents in the mu­si­cal as­pects of the Car­ni­val arts, have bro­ken bar­ri­ers and made ma­jor ac­com­plish­ments in re­cent times.

Last month, Joshua “D Pan Man” Re­grel­lo brought joy to the na­tion when achieved the record of play­ing the steel­pan for 31 hours.

Al­though not yet of­fi­cial­ly record­ed by Guin­ness World Records, Re­grel­lo’s feat on De­cem­ber 28 was just his lat­est ef­fort to put the steel­pan in the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light. His oth­er out­stand­ing per­for­mances in­clude play­ing the in­stru­ment on the Great Wall of Chi­na.

An­oth­er oc­ca­sion for cel­e­bra­tion was pro­vid­ed by reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Machel Mon­tano who re­cent­ly be­came the first so­ca artiste to fea­ture on the pop­u­lar NPR Tiny Desk con­cert.

The pop­u­lar video se­ries of live mu­si­cal per­for­mances, host­ed by NPR Mu­sic in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., is known for its in­ti­mate and au­then­tic per­for­mances.

Machel now joins an im­pres­sive line-up of artistes that have been fea­tured in the se­ries, in­clud­ing Tay­lor Swift, Ali­cia Keyes, Har­ry Styles and Sting.

One of the mu­si­cians who backed the so­ca icon the Tiny Desk stage has al­so been bring­ing pride and joy to T&T with his re­cent ac­com­plish­ments.

Eti­enne Charles has been an­nounced as one of the nom­i­nees in the Out­stand­ing Jazz Al­bum cat­e­go­ry of the 56th an­nu­al NAACP Im­age Awards for his lat­est al­bum, Cre­ole Or­ches­tra.

The trum­peter, com­pos­er, and im­pro­vis­er, who weaves his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al sto­ries in­to his com­po­si­tions, has had great suc­cess with Cre­ole Or­ches­tra which spent sev­en weeks atop the Jazz­week charts and was named the num­ber one al­bum of their top 100 for 2024.

Charles, who stays close to his T&T roots, re­cent­ly played a key role in the re­turn of LIVE brass to the streets on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

Hats off to these tal­ent­ed sons of T&T for giv­ing us rea­sons to cel­e­brate and for pro­vid­ing the mu­si­cal in­spi­ra­tion we all need.