Kaiso Showkase opened to a sold-out au­di­ence at Palm's Club, San Fer­nan­do, last Fri­day. Ca­lyp­so en­thu­si­asts poured in­to the venue short­ly be­fore start time at 8 pm to se­cure the best seats to en­joy the show.

With a favourable mix of so­cial com­men­tary, hu­mour and na­tion-build­ing ren­di­tions this year, pa­trons ei­ther sat still when they had to de­ci­pher a song or cheer loud­ly, en­cor­ing a ca­lyp­son­ian who caught their favour.

Some ca­lyp­so­ni­ans with clev­er­ly craft­ed lyrics, some vet­er­ans and some new­com­ers se­cured mul­ti­ple en­cores. But, the most called back singer on the night was US-based, vet­er­an bard Ran­dolph "Count Robin" Hi­laire singing 4 Cars.

Count Robin's dit­ty at­tacked the cred­i­bil­i­ty of judges who ad­ju­di­cate over the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. He earned him­self four ad­di­tion­al trips back on stage from some stage-pound­ing pa­trons.

Vic­to­ria "Queen Vic­to­ria" Coop­er-Rahim re­joined the cast af­ter a year away from the ca­lyp­so are­na. She rode the waves of the ap­plaud­ing au­di­ence and was called back to the stage twice with her po­lit­i­cal­ly-in­fused ren­di­tion Sus­pect Band.

Al­so lend­ing pos­i­tive ad­vice in ca­lyp­so with a na­tion-build­ing song was new­com­er Nicholas Lu­cas, singing The Wake Up Call. Lu­cas' song shed light on some of so­ci­ety's is­sues.

Ron­dell Don­awa's Hang Dem High was al­so a spin-off from what the ti­tle im­plied and made sev­er­al trips back to the stage to build on his ren­di­tion, which her­ald­ed T&T's top achiev­ers in sports, song and pol­i­tics and urged them to be role mod­els for the young ones.

Ac­com­pa­nied by stilt walk­ers, Ronal­do Lon­don's so­cial com­men­tary, Man's Imag­ine, was al­so pop­u­lar with the crowd, as he sound­ed the call for im­proved hu­man­i­ty.

For­mer TU­CO pres­i­dent Michael Leg­erton's Pro­tect Our Women, Kerice Pas­call's Mr Pop­u­lar, Lyn­nette “La­dy Gyp­sy” Steele and Dar­w­ern Greenidge's For­mu­la al­so got the at­ten­tion of the crowd.

TU­CO PRO and head of the South Cen­tral Re­gion Steve "Ras Kom­man­da" Pas­call al­so pre­sent­ed for­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter Joan Yuille-Willams, Hugh Grant and Ann Mau­reen Don­awa with mer­it plaques for their in­volve­ment and sup­port to Kaiso Showkase over the years.

How­ev­er, be­cause of the huge at­ten­dance on open­ing night, some late-ar­riv­ing pa­trons were de­nied en­try to the Palm’s Club venue, as the Fire Ser­vice per­son­nel deemed the venue to be too full.