Over 100 artistes have signed up for this year's Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, which will be of­fi­cial­ly launched on Thurs­day at the NL­CB Cor­po­rate booth, Queens Park Oval.

A state­ment from the or­gan­is­ers, Southex says the 100-plus artistes have reg­is­tered and sub­mit­ted songs for this year’s event, and the 30 names of the se­mi-fi­nal­ists will be an­nounced at the launch.

It says that a large per­cent­age of en­tries for 2019 came from young artistes be­tween the ages of 18 and 25.

"This is a good sig­nal of the changes tak­ing place with­in the genre of Chut­ney So­ca," Southex said.

The se­mi-fi­nals will be held on Sat­ur­day 26th Jan­u­ary at the Rig, Gulf View start­ing at 8pm.

The Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly will de­liv­er re­marks and Southex said the win­ners of the 2018 event, Nishard Mayrhoo and Neval Chate­lal are all ex­pect­ed to at­tend the launch.