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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

TUCO boss defends Machel’s Calypso Monarch win

by

Shane Superville
523 days ago
20240215

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King has dis­missed what he de­scribes as “gos­sip” over the par­tic­i­pa­tion and vic­to­ry of Machel Mon­tano in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

Mon­tano was crowned Ca­lyp­so Monarch at the Di­manche Gras on Sun­day with his song Soul of Ca­lyp­so.

How­ev­er, some com­menters were crit­i­cal of Mon­tano’s de­ci­sion to en­ter the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter he an­nounced that he would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in Car­ni­val to fo­cus on his stud­ies. Oth­ers ques­tioned the scor­ing cri­te­ria that al­lowed Mon­tano to win the com­pe­ti­tion, as they dis­agreed with the re­sults.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from re­porters at a me­dia con­fer­ence to an­nounce the 2024 Road March win­ner at the VIP lounge oft the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of- Spain, yes­ter­day, King said such con­ver­sa­tions were nat­ur­al.

“I’ve heard all sorts of things. I’ve heard that TU­CO had some sort of arrange­ment with Machel and Machel would have claimed it’s through his teach­ers and so on that this is what in­flu­enced him. With re­gards to the gos­sip and so on, to me I am learn­ing every­day and I am re­al­is­ing that it is just nat­ur­al in our so­ci­ety,” King said.

“The bot­tom line is that Machel Mon­tano has cho­sen to come and par­tic­i­pate for what­ev­er rea­son.”

Re­fer­ring to the lyrics of Mon­tano’s win­ning song, King said TU­CO has al­ways pushed for the re­moval of bar­ri­ers be­tween ca­lyp­so and so­ca, in­sist­ing they are the same genre of mu­sic.

He again said while po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary will al­ways have a place in ca­lyp­so, the art­form should guard against di­vi­sive themes.

He said one of the main pri­or­i­ties for his team has been to find ways of in­creas­ing at­ten­dance at ca­lyp­so events, not­ing that over­ly di­vi­sive themes along lines of pol­i­tics had dis­cour­aged spec­ta­tor turnout.

“Peo­ple who are out there bash­ing, they don’t un­der­stand the sleep­less nights that I as a leader have work­ing out the chal­lenges, what caused this, what caused that. I’ve iden­ti­fied quite a lot and def­i­nite­ly, di­vi­sive ca­lyp­soes have been one,” King said.

“I am open­ly say­ing that I love po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, I love so­cial com­men­tary, I just love the mu­sic and I have a deep pas­sion for it.

“So any mis­con­cep­tion to be­lieve that I am not in this with heart and soul and for the peo­ple, but then we have to re­spect every oth­er en­ti­ty around us.”

King ad­mit­ted that for this year’s events, sev­er­al East In­di­an pa­trons were seen de­scrib­ing the di­ver­si­ty in top­ics and move away from di­vi­sive kaisos in the fi­nal on Di­manche Gras night as a “big plus.”

He al­so said he or­gan­i­sa­tion has re­ceived gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive feed­back from stake­hold­ers for Car­ni­val 2024, not­ing that de­spite chal­lenges, he was pleased with the sup­port of­fered by oth­er part­ner en­ti­ties like PanTrin­ba­go.

King added that he felt it was time a work­able busi­ness mod­el was ap­plied to ca­lyp­so.

“Car­ni­val to some peo­ple is the ‘peo­ple thing’ and the at­ti­tude you would see demon­strat­ed is that we have to give away shows, we have to give this, we have to give this.

“The main thing is that the time has come for ca­lyp­so to en­ter in­to a busi­ness mod­el and we are try­ing our best.”


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