Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Kern “Trinidad Kil­la” Joseph’s idea to per­form vir­tu­al­ly dur­ing the semi­fi­nal of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on (USC) com­pe­ti­tion has been re­ject­ed by the event’s or­gan­is­ers.

Di­rec­tor Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la said yes­ter­day that Joseph’s pro­pos­al went against the com­pe­ti­tion’s rules, and since he can­not be present for the per­for­mance, the Es­ki­mo singer had with­drawn.

“The rules of the com­pe­ti­tion state that video sub­mis­sions and vir­tu­al per­for­mances would be al­lowed for the au­di­tions phase, but each con­tes­tant must be phys­i­cal­ly present for both the semis and the fi­nals,” Pre­cil­la said.

He said sec­ond re­serve Melick Bap­tiste will take Joseph’s place in the ‘semis’ at the Na­pari­ma Bowl Am­phithe­atre, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day.

“We wish Trinidad Kil­la great suc­cess in every­thing he does,” he said.

Joseph, who is still out of the coun­try, post­ed his rea­son for with­draw­ing on his In­sta­gram page.

He said, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly this year we planned to do a holo­gram per­for­mance for So­ca Monarch, but un­for­tu­nate­ly no vir­tu­al per­for­mances is ac­cept­ed.”

Al­though his idea did not ma­te­ri­alise, Joseph com­mend­ed the or­gan­is­ers for bring­ing back a so­ca com­pe­ti­tion for the sea­son af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion took a hia­tus in 2022. He be­lieves it will ben­e­fit the genre and the youth.

“Get­ting all the youths in­volved is a good look, so I want to big up the whole so­ca cham­pi­ons team,” he said.

The singer, who said he will be look­ing at the com­pe­ti­tion from New York, said he was hap­py his per­form­ing po­si­tion went to a young per­son.

“Melick, I see you was there, they was go­ing to pick you for the So­ca Cham­pi­ons, but I don’t know what go on but I want to give you my po­si­tion to rep­re­sent on the stage as I can’t make it,” he said.

Joseph wished all 30 con­tes­tants in both cat­e­gories the best.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Bap­tiste’s man­ag­er, Nigel Eng­lish, con­firmed he will be per­form­ing at the com­pe­ti­tion.

“We com­ing with full force be­cause we came from the back as the un­der­dog. We com­ing to show that we de­serve to be there,” he said.

Eng­lish said Joseph’s video showed that some artistes were look­ing out for each oth­er, and it was not just “fight down.” He ad­mit­ted that it would be a tough task to have every­thing ready for Sun­day, but he was con­fi­dent it would be ac­com­plished.

Af­ter the draw­ing for the or­der of per­for­mances on Mon­day, Pre­cil­la ex­plained that the artistes had a full week ahead. He said on Tues­day, all 30 of them had coach­ing ses­sions (So­ca School).

“We had the busi­ness of mu­sic, mu­sic dis­tri­b­u­tion, vo­cal coach­ing, we had artiste man­age­ment coach­ing, and we had artiste eti­quette and stage eti­quette,” he said.

Yes­ter­day they vis­it­ed the am­phithe­atre in San Fer­nan­do and for the rest of the week the singers will have band re­hearsals.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to some of the artistes af­ter the draw on Mon­day.

Open­ing the show on Sun­day is To­ba­go’s So­ca Ti­tans cham­pi­on Ja­heim Verse Thomas. He said it was “tru­ly a bless­ing” to be a part of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The 12th per­former, Imani Ray, said she was a con­tes­tant in So­ca Monarch in 2020 and was hap­py to come back and com­pete but on a greater scale.

“I love what they are do­ing with the re­vamp,” she said.

An­thonell Bra­vo told Guardian Me­dia that as a sin­gle moth­er, she was look­ing for­ward to the re­al­i­ty el­e­ment of the com­pe­ti­tion. She said it was not easy and could not do it with­out her small cir­cle. Her song this year is Rough Up.

Aaron Dun­can and Jadel felt the same, as they be­lieve it was a great way to con­nect with their sup­port­ers.