Sto­ries by PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

A new so­ca com­pe­ti­tion is com­ing for Car­ni­val 2025, but it is not the re­turn of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM).

On Fri­day the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts an­nounced the se­lec­tion of Star Glob­al Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed (SGP) to de­vel­op and man­age an in­ter­na­tion­al, pre­mier So­ca com­pe­ti­tion for Car­ni­val 2025.

In the re­lease, the min­istry con­firmed a joint ven­ture be­tween The Lol­labee Group, Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la, Adri­an Chan­dler and oth­ers with ex­per­tise in tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion and events man­age­ment.

The min­istry said it would pro­vide aux­il­iary sup­port to­ward the suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of this event in the pro­mo­tion of our peo­ple and cul­ture.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said, “We are ex­cit­ed to part­ner with the con­sor­tium led by Star Glob­al Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed in reimag­in­ing the so­ca com­pe­ti­tion for Car­ni­val 2025.

“This com­pe­ti­tion will, not on­ly show­case the best in so­ca mu­sic but will al­so play a vi­tal role in en­hanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s stand­ing as a pre­mier cul­tur­al and tourist des­ti­na­tion.

“We are ea­ger to bring this vi­brant as­pect of our Car­ni­val to the fore­front, fur­ther­ing the growth of our cre­ative in­dus­tries and pro­mot­ing the rich cul­tur­al her­itage of our na­tion.”

How­ev­er, in a com­ment sent to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he con­firmed the event was not the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch.

He said, “The de­cline of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch has tak­en away these op­por­tu­ni­ties for so­ca artistes to re­al­ly show­case them­selves. And in light of this, the min­istry in­vit­ed in­ter­est­ed par­ties ear­li­er this year for the de­vel­op­ment, pro­mo­tion, and man­age­ment of an in­ter­na­tion­al so­ca com­pe­ti­tion. Now this is not the re­vival of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch. In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch is a busi­ness name, reg­is­tered and owned by a sep­a­rate or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

ISM, which is owned by the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion, ran from 1993 to 2020 and was one of the pre­mier events in Car­ni­val up un­til its de­cline in the mid to late 2010.

CPF di­rec­tor Ge­of­frey Whar­ton-Lake con­firmed that the new com­pe­ti­tion had no con­nec­tion to ISM.

He, how­ev­er, de­clined to com­ment on this new de­vel­op­ment.

Jerome Pre­cil­la said the SGP team was ex­cit­ed to get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to push so­ca mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and he felt the com­bined re­sources and ex­per­tise of the con­sor­tium would see a cu­ra­tion of a world-class live event.

“We have Strict­ly FX. They do the lo­gis­tics be­hind many of the big events, like Stink and Dut­ty, Out in South. Lol­labee Group, which is a pre­mier en­ter­tain­ment com­pa­ny in T&T, has done a lot of cor­po­rate and mu­si­cal events such as Xpe­ri­ence. And these events have over 10,000 peo­ple in be­tween SFX and the Lol­labee Group. And I do my events, so we are an ex­pe­ri­enced team when it comes to events and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion.

“So this show­case this year is go­ing to be a well-pro­duced prod­uct so that it can be tele­vised and streamed across the world, across the re­gion, so we’re go­ing to fo­cus heav­i­ly on that,” said Pre­cil­la, who con­firmed he would not be com­pet­ing in the event.

He urged artistes and the pub­lic to get ready to be a part of the event. “We’re putting artistes on high­er alert to make sure to get their mu­sic ready be­cause we don’t have much time be­tween now and when we have to ex­e­cute this event. So we’re hear­ing great mu­sic out so far. We want the artists to get their mu­sic ready, to sub­mit, to be a part of this com­pe­ti­tion. We are go­ing to need the sup­port of the gen­er­al pub­lic as we build a brand new su­per com­pe­ti­tion that is go­ing to show­case our cul­ture,” he said.