TUCO: One song for Calypso Monarch final

The Calypso Monarch competition will have a one-song final this year and it will take place on Carnival Thursday along with the Extempo Championship final.

Both finals would be held at the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Savannah on February 28, separate from Dimanche Gras on Carnival Sunday.

Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation (TUCO) president Lutalo Masimba, aka Brother Resistance, said members of the organisation voted that one song would be sung for the Calypso Monarch final in a meeting yesterday at the savannah.

He added that Calypso Fiesta, the Calypso Monarch semifinals, would take place as usual at Skinner Park, and that registration for all competitions would open on January 16.

Asked about the competitions’ separation from Dimanche Gras, Masimba said although the calypso component of the show never went over two hours and 45 minutes, Government wanted a show on Carnival Sunday without competition.

However, he said he felt good about the opportunity for TUCO to “do our own thing” because it was important that the organisation had control of its Calypso Monarch final. “If you’re running a competition and you manage and control, you make the rules and regulations, you do the registration in the preliminaries and semis, and when it gets to the finals, you have absolutely no control over anything because it is submerged within the context of an NCC-directed event, something kinda wrong there right?"

He said in promoting and producing the event TUCO would do everything in its power to ensure it would be one of the “best and brightest” event on the Carnival calender.