Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

With the Christ­mas sea­son com­ing to a close, ur­ban ra­dio sta­tions are prepar­ing to switch over to so­ca for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

DJs and an­nounc­ers at SLAM 100.5FM said yes­ter­day that they will be say­ing farewell to oth­er gen­res at mid­night on De­cem­ber 31, and from then on so­ca mu­sic will be played with­out in­ter­rup­tion un­til Ash Wednes­day.

Ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Jyn­nyn Ed­wards said she was ex­cit­ed about Car­ni­val 2024 and has been tak­ing note of the vi­su­als and Tik­Tok chal­lenges that are trend­ing on so­cial me­dia. She al­so did a hearty ren­di­tion of one of her favourite tunes.

“I def­i­nite­ly think Mi­cal Te­ja has been do­ing his thing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, trav­el­ling, rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go and as an artiste, he’s one of them that’s putting out mu­sic with videos and you know it’s all about the vi­su­als right now, Tik­Tok chal­lenges, those kind of things. So, for me, Mi­cal Te­ja with the DNA and Run­away, I ab­solute­ly love those two,” Jyn­nyn said, be­fore singing Na­dia Bat­son Mar­ket.

Artiste and ra­dio an­nounc­er Kris Kennedy agreed that Te­ja’s DNA was one of his favourites, along­side Bat­son’s Mar­ket.

He said younger so­ca artistes were com­ing out with bet­ter so­ca tunes for this year’s Car­ni­val.

“There is a song from GBM Nu­tron and Farmer Nap­py, In D Cen­tre, and I love how they sam­pled Carl and Car­ol Ja­cobs’ Fix it up. It’s nice to ac­tu­al­ly get that blend of the old school in­to the new mu­sic,” Kennedy said.

“I want to say in terms of some of the artistes that a lot of peo­ple were not look­ing in­to, the younger artistes in the in­dus­try, I think they have some of the bet­ter songs. I think that the younger artistes need to be show­cased,” he said.

“Tevin Hart­man has a re­al nice song called Com­pa­ny. I’m see­ing that the next big fete, Tribe Ice, is go­ing to start on Sat­ur­day. It will def­i­nite­ly be a sta­ple that peo­ple will def­i­nite­ly be look­ing for­ward to see­ing what songs play and what songs have al­ready been played.”

Ewart “DJ Wat­ty” Mundy agreed that up-and-com­ing so­ca artistes were prov­ing their artistry with the range of their songs this sea­son. He not­ed that some tunes are al­so in­cor­po­rat­ing sto­ry el­e­ments and themes that give them year-long ap­peal, rather than be­ing prod­ucts that can on­ly be en­joyed dur­ing Car­ni­val.

“We’re ac­tu­al­ly see­ing a lot of songs de­vel­op in terms of mov­ing away from the “jump up and wave and wine. We’re ac­tu­al­ly see­ing sto­ry­lines be­hind mu­sic now. I think we keep evolv­ing in that and I love to see that. That means we can lis­ten to so­ca mu­sic out­side of Car­ni­val rather than just play­ing songs for a fete,” he said.