KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai says there were no dis­cus­sions with or­gan­is­ers of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on (USC) be­fore the 2026 edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion was shelved due to a lack of fund­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Kan­hai con­firmed that the event’s or­gan­is­ers for­mal­ly wrote to the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and copied the NCC on the cor­re­spon­dence.

As a re­sult, he said, any de­ci­sion on fund­ing would have had to orig­i­nate from the Min­istry of Cul­ture.

“We have not had any meet­ing or dis­cus­sion with the pro­mot­ers, so I do not know about fund­ing from the min­istry. The NCC al­so has to go through the min­istry to get fund­ing as well. The fund­ing that is al­lo­cat­ed to the NCC has to go through the min­istry (Cul­ture) to get the Min­istry of Fi­nance to make the re­leas­es,” Kan­hai said.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the mat­ter, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Michelle Ben­jamin re­quest­ed that ques­tions be sent to her mo­bile phone.

Al­though the ques­tions were sub­mit­ted, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.

The Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on, in­tro­duced for Car­ni­val 2025, was con­ceived as a new com­pet­i­tive plat­form for emerg­ing so­ca artistes at a time when the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion had not re­turned. Un­like its pre­de­ces­sor, the USC fea­tured a sin­gle uni­fied ti­tle rather than sep­a­rate Pow­er and Groovy cat­e­gories, a for­mat that or­gan­is­ers said was in­tend­ed to mod­ernise the com­pe­ti­tion and broad­en its ap­peal.

The in­au­gur­al event gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

Grena­di­an so­ca artiste Wren­roy “Bla­ka Dan” Ogiste cap­tured the over­all ti­tle in 2025, earn­ing the grand prize of $1 mil­lion with his per­for­mance of Bless­ing.

Nkosi “Su­cre” Su­cre won the Youth Cat­e­go­ry, per­form­ing his song The Great­est at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. He se­cured the top prize of $200,000, be­com­ing the first-ever Youth So­ca Cham­pi­on.

Or­gan­is­ers lat­er re­port­ed that the com­pe­ti­tion de­liv­ered tan­gi­ble ca­reer ben­e­fits for sev­er­al per­form­ers, in­clud­ing se­cur­ing band place­ments, pro­duc­ing hit songs and fa­cil­i­tat­ing high-pro­file col­lab­o­ra­tions. De­spite those gains, the event will not be staged for Car­ni­val 2026 af­ter or­gan­is­ers were un­able to se­cure fund­ing with­in the re­quired time­frame.

Founder and pro­duc­er Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la said ap­proach­es were made to both the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the NCC.

How­ev­er, he said no re­sponse was re­ceived be­fore the pro­duc­tion win­dow closed.

He said the com­pe­ti­tion will re­turn in 2027, hope­ful­ly with the back­ing of pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor part­ners.