When the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion was first an­nounced, many as­sumed it was the re­place­ment for the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM) com­pe­ti­tion.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, the com­pe­ti­tion’s or­gan­is­ers stat­ed that it was not the an it­er­a­tion of the ISM but rather a new plat­form meant to el­e­vate artistes with­in the so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty.

Pri­or to last Thurs­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the $1 mil­lion cheque to the first ever Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on, Bla­ka Dan, or­gan­is­er Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la out­lined his frus­tra­tion about the cur­rent state of the in­dus­try.

“I hate to see an artist when they get it up in age, hav­ing to have to raise a bar­be­cue or some sort of fund-rais­er be­cause they’re ill, or they just can’t stand on their own two feet. I wouldn’t say that is the artist’s fault alone. I would say it is a lack of de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try where you don’t know what you don’t know. So what we want to try to do is to make sure we ed­u­cate these artists and de­vel­op them for a ca­reer to have them­selves as a busi­ness it­self’,” said Pre­cil­la, at the com­pe­ti­tion’s prize giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Bun­ga­low Lounge in St Clair.

He not­ed that in many cas­es, artistes find them­selves in this po­si­tion be­cause there is a gap be­tween the cre­ation of the mu­sic and the busi­ness re­quired to push the artistes.

“What we re­alised with our in­dus­try in T&T, with mu­sic, peo­ple brand it more as a hus­tle than a mu­sic in­dus­try. What we are try­ing to do is move away from that hus­tle men­tal­i­ty in­to an in­dus­try men­tal­i­ty,” he said, adding that the on­ly way that can be done is by de­vel­op­ing the artistes, and not on­ly the artistes, but the en­tire in­dus­try as a whole, in­clud­ing the man­agers.

“So what we want to do now, mov­ing for­ward, as you all would have seen, is that we want to fur­ther ex­pand on these things,” he said.

From the out­side look­ing in, some may not have no­ticed the el­e­ments that sep­a­rat­ed the new event from ISM. In­deed, it did hit on sim­i­lar beats; pre­lim­i­nar­ies and semi­fi­nals, cul­mi­nat­ing in a fi­nal show that was broad­cast on Car­ni­val Fri­day night.

How­ev­er, from the on­set, Pre­cil­la in­di­cat­ed the show would in­clude a re­al­i­ty show el­e­ment where the jour­ney of the artistes through these dif­fer­ent phas­es would be seen. In­clud­ed in this jour­ney was the So­ca school, which Pre­cil­la said he planned to ex­pand in sub­se­quent edi­tions.

“The oth­er el­e­ment that you all would have seen is some­thing that we im­ple­ment­ed called So­ca school. So in the past, we would just have com­pe­ti­tions where peo­ple come, they com­pete, they get the prize mon­ey, and they go on. We were say­ing, no, what we want to do is to have de­vel­op­ment of the artistes. So we im­ple­ment­ed some­thing called so­ca school, which, with the time frame that we had, we couldn’t ex­tend it past one day. We had a one day sem­i­nar where we brought in dif­fer­ent lec­tur­ers,” he said.

Those lec­tur­ers in­clud­ed Melis­sa Jimenez, who spoke about the artist de­vel­op­ment and the busi­ness of mu­sic, Mar­tin Man­mo­han, who spoke about mu­sic dis­tri­b­u­tion and Wendy Shep­herd, who did vo­cal coach­ing with them.

“And then we al­so had Wen­dell Naipaul, who every­body knows is a gang­ster when it comes to stage man­age­ment. But he came to guide in terms of artist eti­quette, how to car­ry about your­self as an artiste it­self,” the event or­gan­is­er said.

With the new Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin present, Pre­cil­la made the de­c­la­ra­tion to push this pro­gramme fur­ther.

“So things that we could look for­ward to in 2026 as we part­ner with the min­istry and with the NCC, is that we would ex­pand this de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, this so­ca school, so it wouldn’t be one day, but it could last over a cou­ple of weeks. We could add some more cours­es, make it length­i­er, so that we get that in­for­ma­tion in­to the artiste,” he said.

Ben­jamin in her speech at the event, al­so ac­knowl­edged the need to em­pha­sise the busi­ness as­pect of the craft.

“Tal­ent may open the door, but it is train­ing that keeps it open, and my min­istry is com­mit­ted to this. That is why we are in­vest­ing not on­ly in your artistry, but al­so in your de­vel­op­ment as cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neurs. And I think that it­self for tax­pay­ers, de­serves a round of ap­plause. You can ex­pect new work­shops to fo­cus on some writ­ing, stage, craft, brand­ing and the busi­ness of mu­sic. And that is why we are here tonight, the busi­ness of mu­sic. And that com­mit­ment is there fit your learn­ing and I should say ex­pe­ri­ence in Car­ni­val in a dif­fer­ent way. And this is just the be­gin­ning,” she said.

The min­is­ter said, “Events like these push you to evolve, to in­no­vate and to cre­ate to reach high­er but artis­tic growth doesn’t end un­der the lights. My min­istry is deeply com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing your jour­ney be­yond the stage through ac­cess to pro­fes­sion­al stu­dios, op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and plat­forms that play so­ca ex­act­ly where it be­longs, and that is the world stage.”

Man­ag­er of lo­cal mu­sic group Free­town Col­lec­tive Dr Keron Niles agreed there needs to be a change in the mind­set of the artistes. But, he said, there was al­so an at­ti­tude shift that was re­quired by the busi­ness or pri­vate sec­tor to­ward the cre­ative in­dus­try.

“We need more cre­ative prac­ti­tion­ers to view them­selves, not just as artists, but as the own­ers of en­ter­pris­es. We need them to view them­selves, and what they’re do­ing, we need them to view them­selves as per­son who are build­ing cre­ative en­ter­pris­es, and be se­ri­ous about that, be­cause that’s what’s go­ing to sup­port their liveli­hood, and that is what’s go­ing to make the build­ing cre­ative busi­ness in­to a sus­tain­able liveli­hood,” Niles told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He said while this de­vel­op­men­tal phase might start with the artiste, it is not just about the artiste as the so­ci­ety needs to val­ue the cre­ative sec­tor prop­er­ly and val­ue cre­ative prod­ucts prop­er­ly.

“That in­cludes the pri­vate sec­tor, in terms of when they call artists to do jin­gles and ads and dif­fer­ent things they need. We need to en­sure that per­sons aren’t be­ing tak­en ad­van­tage of just be­cause they may or may not be ig­no­rant of the busi­ness as­pect,” said Niles.

Be­yond the cash prizes, Rome al­so not­ed that the com­pe­ti­tion reached over three mil­lion peo­ple across the world via so­cial me­dia, un­der­lin­ing his view that the tra­di­tion­al ap­proach can not be the on­ly way to ap­proach the de­vel­op­ment of the in­dus­try.