Searching for Soca Monarch’s soul

DEBBIE JACOB

I DIDN'T believe in the Soca Monarch competition when William Munro first announced his plan, but I will make a flag to wave like no one else in this country if the competition survives and overcomes this year’s cancellation.

Thirty years ago, Munro and I had many confrontations over stories I wrote asking legitimate questions about promises, management and delayed payments to contestants. Munro felt attacked and refused to consider that I was doing my job as a journalist. He couldn’t have been pleased when the Express assigned me to cover the first competition. No one else wanted to be there in those early days when the crowds didn’t come.

Say what you want about Munro, he loved soca to the point of taking a huge financial risk to achieve what he hoped to be an equitable space for fast-tempo danceable music that couldn’t get a foothold in the traditional National Calypso Monarch competition.

Before Soca Monarch, optimists applauded when the best party tunes got chosen for Dimanche Gras night; the pessimists declared soca singers were carried to the competition to be placed at the bottom.

I bristled at the thought of a musical civil war and felt the answer was getting more progressive judges. The English teacher in me did not believe judging calypso and soca was like comparing mangoes and oranges. A better rubric for judging could have solved any problem.

But the great divide had reached a point of no return. People had taken matters into their own hands. Calypsonians spoke of the song that had the most energy on the road on Carnival Monday and Tuesday as opposed to the song played at judging points for the Road March. In the people vs the judges battle, the people insisted that the song overlooked in Dimanche Gras would become Road March so that honour sometimes became a weird revenge choice.

I could name a few years this happened, but I’ll give just one example: Get Something and Wave in Carnival 1991. Many people felt it should have placed higher in the Dimanche Gras competition even thought SuperBlue sang in slow motion to make it competitive with slow songs. Numbed by the slow tempo of the bouncy soca, the audience collapsed in their chairs, but most SuperBlue supporters didn’t know that. The Dimanche Gras show already deemed boring by so many soca fans meant many people hadn’t been present to experience the reality of that night.

Set free from the slow-paced Dimanche Gras competition, soca singers cranked up the tempo, never understanding that the energy of a song comes from the beat – not the tempo. Props and expensive performances had a stranglehold on Soca Monarch. The groovy soca competition got added to take care of the no-man's land between calypso and blistering soca, but this felt like a patch on a festering sore.

Calypso became a house divided in more than one way, and it symbolised much of what is wrong with this country: no direction, no plan, an inability to identify and rectify mistakes and too much wasted money. We all once lamented the plight of the poor calypsonian, stereotyped as singing for a bottle of rum. Performers deserved better pay, but prize money got thrown at these competitions in such an obscene way that it gobbled up creativity. It became more and more difficult to honour that exorbitant prize money.

In the void of this Carnival, the 30th anniversary of the Soca Monarch competition, I remember Soca Monarch’s pinnacle with big crowds and the promise of international exposure. By then, I had bowed out of covering the competition, which had become a plum assignment for entertainment reporters. Munro looked for me and when I told him, “I don’t like crowds,” he said, “You always have a special place at Soca Monarch. I’ll give you the best seat away from everyone. You were there when others weren’t.”

Munro and I had crossed the great divide that calypso and soca couldn’t manage to do.

I hope Soca Monarch survives with a scaled-down version of prize money that the show can comfortably support and singers who are willing to perform for the sake of the art form.

Prestige Promotions has a whole year to reflect on the best way forward – a whole year to work on any issues it has encountered through its history. It would be nice if we can prove to ourselves that we have the ability to solve some problems in this country. Saving Soca Monarch is more symbolic than you might think.