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Thursday, August 14, 2025

Dimanche Gras showdown tonight; NCC expects fierce competition

by

Shaliza Hassanali
550 days ago
20240211

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) has in­ject­ed “un­der $2 mil­lion” to host tonight’s high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Di­manche Gras show at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah (QPS), which will see so­ca star Machel Mon­tano and pop­u­lar singer Mi­cal Te­ja com­pet­ing for the first time for the cov­et­ed Ca­lyp­so Monarch crown.

NCC’s deputy chair­man and artis­tic di­rec­tor Davlin Thomas promised “a fab­u­lous, fan­tas­tic and ec­sta­t­ic” five-hour-long show which is ex­pect­ed to kick off at 7 pm on the big stage.

“It’s go­ing to be a fierce fight this year for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch. It’s a bat­tle of all bat­tles. Yeah, it’s go­ing to be in­sane,” said an up­beat Thomas, dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day at the Sa­van­nah.

Thomas is the cre­ative mind be­hind the pro­gramme and has ex­ten­sive knowl­edge as an artis­tic di­rec­tor.

Reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Ta’zyah O’Con­nor will come up against 11 oth­er com­peti­tors, each of whom has eight min­utes to per­form.

“This is the pizazz of the big Sun­day of Car­ni­val. It’s not go­ing to be a bor­ing en­gage­ment,” he as­sured.

The theme of this year’s show is “Car­ni­val Come Back–The Rit­u­al.”

Thomas said NCC al­so ex­pects fierce ri­val­ry in the Kings and Queens of Car­ni­val con­test, so they de­cid­ed to pull out all the stops to get peo­ple to buy in­to the show, which is build­ing mo­men­tum.

Hav­ing print­ed 5,000 North and Grand tick­ets for the big event, Thomas said they are ex­pect­ing a sell-out crowd with guest per­for­mances by top artistes Na­dia Bat­son, Patrice Roberts, Ravi B, Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine, Neval Chate­lal, Al­i­son Hinds, De Voice and Skin­ny Fab­u­lous to name a few.

“We are ex­pect­ing a young crowd this year be­cause of the line­up of Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal­ists. We know there are in­creas­es in tick­et sales. We had some dis­cus­sions about mak­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions for some of the ad­di­tion­al peo­ple (pa­trons) who will be com­ing be­cause it’s not just Machel they want to see and hear.”

Thomas said Te­ja, Kurt Allen, Karene As­che, and Helon Fran­cis are some of the hot favourites.

“Be­cause of the new en­trants and the in­ten­si­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion it­self, this show will be fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent.”

He said in the open­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the show, “Bat­son would pay trib­ute to de­ceased ca­lyp­son­ian Denyse Plum­mer by singing her fa­mous Nah leav­ing kaiso.

“If you are a lover of Denyse Plum­mer you are go­ing to cry. Of course, it is go­ing to be sub­tle.”

More than 100 dancers will al­so per­form against the back­drop of py­rotech­nic, smoke ef­fects and coloured light­ing while guests will be en­ter­tained with T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan.

Two brass bands–The A-Team and Brass 2 the World–are in the line­up.

NCC will al­so host a pre-show be­gin­ning at 5 pm for ear­ly pa­trons to en­joy them­selves.

Fol­low­ing the re­sults, Thomas is hop­ing pa­trons stick around in the Sa­van­nah for the “jam­ming” and lat­er join the J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions.

On the cost to stage a show of this mag­ni­tude?

Thomas said that ques­tion is of­ten neb­u­lous, so he sought to pro­vide con­text.

He ex­plained a lot of in­fra­struc­ture is al­ready in place for the show, but ad­di­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture would be need­ed “in terms of screens and light­ing and so on. Then you’re re­al­ly look­ing at un­der $2 mil­lion. That is for per­form­ers.”

This mon­ey does not in­clude pay­ments to the win­ners of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The Ca­lyp­so Monarch champ will col­lect $500,000 and a Grand Vi­tara car.

On Thurs­day, the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed the pres­i­dent of the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Mark Ayen to find out the first prize for the King and Queen of Car­ni­val.

How­ev­er, Ayen ad­vised that we reach out to for­mer TTC­BA pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel to get a re­sponse. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Gabriel said she would not be able to re­veal the prize struc­ture for the win­ners of the Kings and Queens in the se­nior cat­e­go­ry.

“I am afraid I would not be able to dis­close that be­cause the Kings and Queens re­al­ly don’t like to see the prizes ad­ver­tised in this age of crime. Re­al­ly and tru­ly a lot of them have asked that the prize struc­ture not be dis­closed.”

NCC has been al­lo­cat­ed $141 mil­lion to man­age this year’s Car­ni­val.

This fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed $6 mil­lion less than what the NCC re­ceived in 2023.

Thomas said NCC ex­pects sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue from the host­ing of Car­ni­val 2024.

In 2022, NCC gen­er­at­ed $1.3 bil­lion in rev­enue from Car­ni­val events.

Last year, Thomas said, there was a five per cent in­crease in rev­enue, and they are pro­ject­ing for this year’s fes­ti­val a fur­ther ten per cent in­crease.

Thomas al­so dis­closed NCC re­cent­ly for­mu­lat­ed a health, safe­ty and dis­as­ter re­sponse com­mit­tee and more than 100 jan­i­tors have been re­tained to clean the stage for the two-day fes­ti­val.


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