RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With emp­ty seats and few­er young voic­es than usu­al, this year’s San Fer­nan­do Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch re­flect­ed the strain of fund­ing chal­lenges. Still, as a new cham­pi­on, Janaya Clark, 11, of Mod­ern Minds Acad­e­my, was crowned, calls grew loud­er for ca­lyp­so to be made a sub­ject in schools and for Car­ni­val to en­dure de­spite the odds.

Clarke emerged as the win­ner of the San Fer­nan­do Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion af­ter de­liv­er­ing her win­ning ca­lyp­so called Role Mod­els, top­ping the field with 268 points.

The com­pe­ti­tion took place at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall un­der the pa­tron­age of the San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee, head­ed by May­or Robert Par­ris.

Dressed in a che­quered out­fit and hav­ing a com­pelling pres­ence de­spite her pe­tite size, Clark out­per­formed her com­peti­tors aged sev­en to 18, who were judged in a sin­gle cat­e­go­ry this year.

Sec­ond place went to 18-year-old Josi­ah Fer­ri­er of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, who earned 262 points with his ca­lyp­so, The Truth.

Third place was claimed by Asia Tidd, 14, of Holy Faith Con­vent, who sang Fam­i­ly Cri­sis.

De­fend­ing cham­pi­on Xhaiden Dar­ius, aged nine, of Savonet­ta Pri­ma­ry, placed fourth, scor­ing 254 points with his son In­stru­ment Change.

In fifth po­si­tion was 11-year-old Stephanie Fi­garo of St Gabriel’s Girls’ RC, who earned 242 points with Build­ing a Bet­ter World.

Sixth place went to Ny­la Hamil­ton, 13, of Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School with Take Back We Na­tion, scor­ing 234 points, while sev­enth place was award­ed to ten-year-old Je­di­ah Bruno of San Fer­nan­do Boys RC, who sang Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and scored 229 points.

Co­or­di­na­tor for the judges, Roslyn Jack­son, said she hopes ca­lyp­so can be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the school cur­ricu­lum as a sep­a­rate sub­ject to en­cour­age greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ju­nior Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

Jack­son said cur­rent­ly it falls un­der so­cial stud­ies, but not­ed that if it is a sep­a­rate sub­ject, stu­dents will learn about cul­ture, cur­rent af­fairs and cre­ativ­i­ty as they doc­u­ment Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry through song. An­oth­er judge, Jil­lian George, al­so said ca­lyp­so was im­por­tant and should be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the schools’ cur­ricu­lum.

King Fran­cis, a judge who has worked for decades, urged par­ents to en­cour­age their chil­dren to par­tic­i­pate in ca­lyp­so.

“Get your child in tune with the cur­rent af­fairs be­cause ca­lyp­so is about sto­ry­telling,” he said.

Mind­ful of the abysmal turnout, May­or Par­ris not­ed that the com­pe­ti­tion for­mat changed this year due to fund­ing con­straints, re­sult­ing in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents com­pet­ing to­geth­er rather than in sep­a­rate cat­e­gories.

“Usu­al­ly the Ju­nior Monarch has two win­ners, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary, but this year stu­dents be­tween the ages of ten and 18 were judged in the same com­pe­ti­tion,” Par­ris said.

The may­or al­so ad­dressed on­go­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges fac­ing Car­ni­val in San Fer­nan­do, cit­ing re­duced spon­sor­ship and de­lays in fund­ing ap­provals.

“You can­not run Car­ni­val in con­stant debt. The chair­man be­fore me, he did not sub­mit his au­dit­ed forms in a man­ner that was suit­able to NCC. Since I be­came the chair­man, I al­ways do that. And the last chair­man of NCC and the board of NCC and I met, and they said they fi­nal­ly see and fi­nal­ly un­der­stand the short­com­ings in Car­ni­val in San Fer­nan­do,” Par­ris said.

He said, de­spite these dif­fi­cul­ties, the city re­mains com­mit­ted to host­ing Car­ni­val events.