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Friday, July 25, 2025

Londons create calypso history

3 Kings, four titles

by

Rishard Khan
2338 days ago
20190301

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Lon­don fam­i­ly has achieved a clean sweep of this year's ma­jor ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions, be­com­ing, in a true sense of the word, a fam­i­ly of ca­lyp­so roy­al­ty.

The feat was achieved Kaiso Ra­ma at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day night, when Ronal­do Lon­don added the 2019 Ca­lyp­so Monarch crown to his cab­i­net. Singing Man's Imag­i­na­tion, Ronal­do beat Karene As­che (Lo­co and Bro­co) in­to sec­ond place while de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Helon Fran­cis (What Com­ing Next) had to set­tle for third.

Hours be­fore, his un­cle, vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Bri­an Lon­don, be­came the Ex­tem­po Monarch af­ter beat beat­ing Phillip "Black Sage" Mur­ray in the Ex­tem­po Fi­nal.

Just last week, Ronal­do had se­cured the Young Kings ti­tle while his broth­er Ri­val­do, 17, had copped the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle on Feb­ru­ary 24 with his song “My Pur­pose”.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced, Bri­an Lon­don at­trib­uted their re­sults to God.

“On­ly God, noth­ing else. Noth­ing, noth­ing, noth­ing else…God is good,” a beam­ing Bri­an said.

Speak­ing about his nephews' vic­to­ries, he said: “I think the fu­ture of kaiso is in good hands. You al­ways hear the talk that kaiso dy­ing. You al­ways hear the old adage that kaiso dy­ing and who go­ing to stand up and take the reigns of kaiso and I think these young peo­ple have been stand­ing up and hold­ing on to the reigns and car­ry­ing kaiso along their backs.”

An emo­tion­al Re­nal­do, who at 21 was in the fi­nal for the first time in his ca­reer, said for him it was just an­oth­er day singing ca­lyp­so. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted his fo­cus was on keep­ing ca­lyp­so alive.

“I didn't have any­thing to lose be­ing the youngest com­peti­tor in the com­pe­ti­tion so for me it ain't about the win, it's just about keep­ing ca­lyp­so alive,” Ronal­do, who won $700,000 for his ef­fort, said.

Singing the song which won him this year's Young Kings ti­tle, Ronal­do belt­ed out his pow­er­ful lyrics and up­grad­ed the vi­su­al ef­fects he had from his pre­vi­ous out­ing. His ca­lyp­so was a com­men­tary of how the imag­i­na­tion of mankind had led to dark am­bi­tions of greed and hate, some­thing far from what God cre­at­ed him to be.

“Man start to imag­ine all kind of vague things, all kind of strange things. Imag­ine, man, start to imag­ine all kind of evil plans against his fel­low man. Man start to imag­ine that he is a su­per­pow­er, a next man land he must con­quer un­til he start to op­press man,” he sung.

To vi­su­alise his mes­sage, Ronal­do's ac­tors who were on stage with him in­cor­po­rat­ed the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Cain and Abel, the sons of the first man and woman placed on earth, Adam and Eve.

Ear­li­er, Bri­an Lon­don set the stage for the his­toric achieve­ment in the Ex-Tem­po com­pe­ti­tion. Lon­don, the on­ly per­son to ex-tem­po to the Mary-Anne melody on the night, drew the top­ic “Ah Miss­ing the North Stand” in the elim­i­na­tion round of the fi­nal.

With his play­ful words, Lon­don made no hes­i­ta­tion in pok­ing jabs at the con­tes­tant who im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ed him, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who had spear­head­ed the re­moval of the North Stand.

Lon­don had the crowd's sup­port with lines such as: “If you had­da blame some­body for that blame the NCC chair­man called Gyp­sy” and claims that Gyp­sy might have pock­et­ed the mon­ey which the chair­man claimed he was try­ing to save by re­mov­ing the stand.

In the fi­nal four, Lon­don faced off against Black Sage singing on the top­ic Pub­lish Sex Of­fend­ers while Pe­ters faced off against My­ron “The In­cred­i­ble My­ron B” Bruce on the top­ic Trump is a Trap.

Lon­don and Mur­ray moved to the fi­nal where they had to pro­duce six vers­es on any top­ic they wished. From ear­ly on, Lon­don was the clear crowd favourite and in the end emerged vic­to­ri­ous to win the com­pe­ti­tion and the $200,000 prize.

BOX

The re­sults for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion are as fol­lows:

1. Ronal­do Lon­don - Man's Imag­i­na­tion

2. Karene As­che - Lo­co and Bro­co

3. Helon Fran­cis - What Com­ing Next

4. Maria Bho­la - False Alarm

5. De­von Seales - Two-Face

6. Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters - When Ele­phants Fight

7. Kurt "The Last Bad John of Ca­lyp­so" Allen - Wha Yuh Say

8. Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don - El Muro (The Wall)

9. Du­ane O'Con­nor - Re­spect

10. Joanne "Ti­gress" Row­ley - Who Feels It Knows

11. Er­phaan Alves - I Am

12. Stacey Sobers - Make T&T Great Again

13. An­tho­ny "All_rounder" Hen­drick­son - Where are the Foot­prints

14. Alana "La­dy Watch­man" Sin­nette-Khan - Pres­sure Does Buss Pipe

15. Dawren "Pharoah" Greenidge - For­mu­la

16. Alex "To­ba­go Chalkie" Gift - Trav­el Ad­vi­so­ry


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