Extempo monarch wants $500,000 prize

Extempo monarch Brian London has made another appeal for an increase in the financial rewards for the art form.

London is advocating for an increase from the $200,000 he received this year to $500,000 next year.

As he collected his prize for winning the first ever Ken “Professor” Philmore Calypso Competition atthe statutory meeting of the San Fernando City Corporation, on Wednesday, London said it is a figure he and other practitioners of the art form, including chairman of the National Carnival Commission Winston “Gypsy” Peters, Contender and others, have been clamouring for.

“Because from the preliminaries to the finals, you have to make up four verses on the spot on any random or unknown topic. Four verses is a full kaiso and you have to make up four songs for the preliminaries, the semis and the finals, so you are actually making up four full calypsoes on stage for $200,000.

“That can’t be right,”said London, who also wrote the winning calypso for his nephew, Ronaldo London, National Calypso Monarch 2019, who took home a prize of $700,000.

As he accepted his winnings from San Fernando mayor Junia Regrello, he demonstrated his extempo skills by belting out two verses in which he called for icons to be honoured while they are alive.

London said he is worried that the art form is dying, “and if we don’t harness this legacy and give it the right recognition it could soon be no more. Every extempo competition I go to, I see the same faces: Gypsy, Lingo, Lady Africa, Contender, Black Sage. What will happen when they are no longer here?” he asked.

He surmised, “Because of who we are, we tend to always take things for granted. Recently I heard on the news that pan was being produced in the United States and being sold for as much as US$5,000 – all because we did not appreciate it and harness it and keep it as our own. Because we are so lackadaisical, somebody may well come along and say they are the founders of extempo, because who is bothering to go and patent extempo?”

To ensure the continuation of extempo,in 2015 London founded Friends of the Youths of TT, where he teaches young people how to sing extempo.