6 pho­tos

Shas­tri Boodan

State fund­ing is be­ing wast­ed on the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion says Wen­dell Everse­ly, the vice pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Chut­ney Foun­da­tion of T&T.

Everse­ly spoke with the me­dia yes­ter­day at the se­mi-fi­nal rounds of the 2018 School’s Na­tion­al Car­ni­val In­tel­lec­tu­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion at the Saith Park, Ch­agua­nas.

Everse­ly said most of this year’s songs at the se­nior lev­el were bank­rupt of ideas and that the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch was a “dis­grace to the pop­u­la­tion”.

"We see where the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch is con­cerned, one man threat­ened to shut down the whole or­ga­ni­za­tion be­cause of fund­ing. The Gov­ern­ment should look and see where they are chan­nelling funds in­to and they should re­al­ly put a lot of fund­ing in­to the pri­ma­ry schools and the sec­ondary schools.

"Here it is we are talk­ing about a part of our na­tion­al cul­ture and we see what kind of mu­sic we get at the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch.”

Everse­ly said at the ju­nior lev­el the songs are more con­struc­tive. “The Gov­ern­ment is chan­nelling mon­ey in the wrong di­rec­tion. We will see one man get­ting monies to sing stu­pid­ness.”

He said the stu­dents are giv­en pit­tance for their prize.

Head of the foun­da­tion, Vi­jay Ram­lal Rai said the com­pe­ti­tion was geared to­wards de­vel­op­ment of young peo­ple to en­sure the next gen­er­a­tion pro­duces lyrics that are more mean­ing­ful. Ram­lal Rai said the com­peti­tors in the adult com­pe­ti­tion usu­al­ly re­sort to us­ing melodies and mu­sic from Bol­ly­wood hits. “It’s a form or pira­cy that they do open­ly.” He said those us­ing the melodies have no per­mis­sion to do so and that they must pay roy­al­ties in US dol­lars. The fi­nals of the com­pe­ti­tion comes off on Feb­ru­ary at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and 15 fi­nal­ists will be tak­ing part in the com­pe­ti­tion with a to­tal of $100,000 in prizes at stake.

The fi­nal­ists, to be an­nounced lat­er this week, will come up against de­fend­ing champ Christi­na Chat­ter­goon.