TUCO to crown Soca Champion

This year, “Soca Champion” will be a new initiative of the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (TUCO).

This was revealed yesterday by TUCO’s general manager Lennox London at the launch of TUCO’s two main events, Kaisocarama and Calypso Fiesta.

London said owing to the downturn in the economy TUCO had decided to abolish the categories. He said there will no longer be best nation-building song, best political, best social and the best humour.

But, he said, “A thrilling new feature of the show is that the crowd also becomes the judges, and the artiste receiving the loudest cheer from the audience during their performance will receive a grand prize of $100,000. We will be using a decimeter, which the EMA uses to measure noise. There will be several decimeters around the crowd. “There are still some things we are working on, but we will be using the crowd to determine the winner.”

Some of the artistes disagreed with the plan to use decibel measurements for the competition, and suggested judges should be retained. London said all suggestions will be noted. He said all contestants will go through the normal preliminary judging, where the judges will visit all the calypso tents.

“Those who are not in the tents will perform on a Saturday, where you have what we call the bullpen, to be selected to go Skinner Park. The soca category is the new infusion in the competition.”

Lennox said in the extempo category there will be 12 contestants at the semifinals on February 1, and seven will be chosen to go forward to the finals on February 8.

In the soca champion category there will be 20 artistes competing for eight positions in the finals.

Meanwhile, extempo champion Winston “Gypsy” Peters yesterday said TUCO had been a part of the Soca Monarch from its inception. He said all TUCO is doing is carrying out its mandate, “Everybody makes mistakes. The only people in the world who don’t make mistakes are those who do nothing. People are now questioning why TUCO is getting into the Soca Champion.

“The thing about it is that TUCO was an integral part in the organisation and the founder of both Soca and the Soca Monarch. Why is it I can talk with so much authority? Because I am the one who signed those documents. I happened to be TUCO’s first president, and all the things we have in place prior to what we are having now, I am happy that the founding fathers of TUCO found it fit to put in their constitution, a futuristic approach to the whole initiative where there is room for expansion.”