London takes extempo crown, Bruce is Freestyle Monarch

MYRON BRUCE is the first-ever Freestyle Monarch while Brian London won the Extempo Monarch title in the Kaisorama competition on Thursday night at Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain.

Bruce, whose sobriquet is Calypso Nite, gave a scintillating performance filled with wit, improvisation and high energy to beat Akeem "Preedy" Charles, who himself gave a very polished performance of lyrical gymnastics.

London edged NCC chairman Winston "Gypsy" Peters in an extempo war which culminated in both men, each multiple past extempo champs, singing and dancing their way off stage in a brotherly embrace, a gesture heartily applauded by the small but appreciative audience.

The freestyle results in order were Bruce, Charles, Rohan "Fireball" Richards, Heaven "Snakey" Charles, Rayon "Make It Happen" Bernardo, Clint "Blue Magic" Davis and Shakir "Sackie" Harewood.

The extempo results were London, Peters, Bruce, Nyol Manswell, Philip "Black Sage" Murray, Dion Diaz, Elysia "Lady Syntax" Ray, and Joseph "Lingo" Vautor-La Placeliere.

Unlike past years where singers had to deliver a prepared calypso within one of four categories – social commentary, political commentary, humorous and chutney – in this year's freestyle format, each sang on a topic picked from a box, firstly as individual but with the top four then duelling it out in pairs.

They not only had to improvise on the topic, while taking account of their rivals, but also had to match as best as possible their lyrics to the unfolding beat of their backing track, a novel blend of rapso, rap and dancehall flavours.

Charles handled this unusual musicality with great ease and professionalism, yet so too did Bruce who then deftly outpunched him with his lyrical jabs. Bruce outpaced all by the wit and staccato diction of his lyrics and how easily he matched each line into contours of the backing music.

At one stage, Bruce declared he would take no lessons from any man dressed in the pants Charles was sporting and humourously sought to link his rival to a recent video of politician Watson Duke lying in bed.

Other popular topics for the night included singer Nessa Preppy and her band, President-elect Christine Kangaloo, and businessman Inshan Ishmael's lawsuit against calypsonian Weston "Cro Cro" Rawlins.

The freestyle semis saw Bruce edge out Snakey on the topic, Red woman is tears, with Bruce counting his misfortunes at the hands of each of three females, while Snakey in turn teasingly asked Bruce how he'd feel to find a man like Snakey, inside his home.

Snakey seemed to somewhat invoke the late Winston "Shadow" Bailey in his vocals and stage presence.

Likewise, earlier Davis seemed to channel Austin "Super Blue" Lyons in outfit and movement, although some viewers reckoned his conveyance in the basket of a crane was overkill, as were his three moko jumbies, one of whom fell in the drizzle onstage.

In the extempo final, London humorously sought to link the disappearance of steel beams from the Grandstand to a grocery being constructed in Mayaro by Peters, the National Carnival Commission chairman. Peters denied that, while declaring that his "iron" was more popular than London's.

Bruce and London spoke to reporters.

Bruce, on the freestyle contest, said, "I'm glad to see we had so many youths come through. This year all we had to do was get it right and set the standard and I think the standard was set very high."

He said he had begun as a calypsonian and then ventured into extempo.

"What extempo gave was experience on this stage," he related, suggesting that past experience had helped him to win the freestyle. "The standard is set, so anybody coming next year knows how good they have to come."

Bruce said competition hopefuls must understand current affairs.

"We had some very current topics coming out of the box. Some people didn't handle it well and some handled it very well.

"I must say congratulations to Preedy. He handled all of his topics very well. Fireball and Snakey as well. The experience of these performers showed up as well.

"So, the young ones coming through need to understand that this is not a small stage. This is the big Savannah stage you will be coming to."

He again urged aspirants to ensure they understood current events and to give their best.

Asked about the unusual backing track, he said, "They wanted to bridge the gap and get more young people into the thing. They wanted to give the youths something to come and express themselves in the way they like to express themselves."

London said he had twice before beaten Peters but revealed that he would not have been in extempo, had it not been for Peters, who for many years was the artform's unquestioned king.

London blamed the small crowd size on covid19, crime and the economy. He noted the challenge of connecting with viewers in the vastness of the Big Stage and suggested the extempo artform might work better in a more intimate setting such as NAPA, Port of Spain.

Reflecting on his win, London said he tried to keep himself abreast of what's happening in the news, while also taking time to intimately go through a dictionary to build his word command.

"When I come onstage whatever I have to do, I deal with it."

Asked whether youngsters would continue the artform, he said he often visits schools to do extempo workshops and was now glad to see fresh faces emerging in the competition.

"When the era of Gypsy and Black Sage has passed, what will be left for extempo?" he mulled, while lauding this year's participation of the likes of Manswell, Ray and Diaz.

"Extempo was huge in Grenada and now you can't find it. You have to beg people to come out and do it.

"The turnout was small tonight. I've been looking at the comments of the Promoters Association over the past few weeks."

He noted constraints on attendance due to covid19, crime and cost of living.

"So, taking all these things into consideration, we still had a reasonable turnout, but the turnout was small. Glad to see people were still supporting the culture and extempo is still alive."

London called for a bigger purse than the current $200,000, saying improvising an extempo was harder than singing an already-composed calypso.

He reflected on just beating Peters whom he dubbed "a master of the artform" and Murray.

"It's just a pleasure to compete against these gentlemen.

"Gypsy kept telling me years ago, 'Come in the competition!' I had said, 'Gypsy, that's not for me. I'm a writer. I could write, scratch and rub off, but you don't have any rubber on stage. He kept begging me, 'Come, come, come!' and eventually I went. A few years later I was extempo monarch of TT.

"So I have to thank him for encouraging me and seeing in me probably what I did not see in myself."