Soca obliterates calypso, chutney

THE EDITOR: It has been long in coming, but as of 2023 it is safe to say without contradiction that soca has finally obliterated calypso and chutney – and it couldn’t happen to nicer guys.

For years we beat soca for only being wine and jam, but today soca has saved Carnival and together with pan is drawing cruise ships, thousand-strong audiences and commercial music’s interest in the US.

Soca’s Come Home is fabulous, like how we like ourselves when we drink and party on pension money. No one needs the Soca Monarch anymore, since the standard soca audience is 20,000 as opposed to 25 in a tent and even less is a rumshop chutney show.

Nobody wants to see the Ganges Meets the Nile crowd of 30 to 50 dancers with the worn-out boring theme when you can’t stand still in “hard fete.” Whether you like it or not, “we are one” is a misplaced tag line, the reality being that we are not one on many issues.

Who really can chip to some trash trite about Suchella, kuchela and Sat Maharaj that makes the nation shame?

I am happy to see no calypsonian is ever invited to schools to poison the impressionable minds of the young people. Instead woman bois fighters defend women, while the Government continues to leave us to the fancies of killers and rapists without the pepper spray.

Pity the Skinner Park chamber pot brigade and Brian London who didn’t notice this.

As an old fogey, I was so happy to attend a $450 all-inclusive event. Never mind the three-hour-long traffic jam. I got some doubles and a soft drink alongside some international artistes. I just didn’t want to hear any “we is one” nonsense or any racist, political venom or anything about Keith Rowley managing the country.

Bravo to the activist who is suing a calypsonian for denigrating him. At last calypsonians will know that not all East Indian descendants live by aloo pie only, and are not all car thieves.

Incidentally, the boats bought in Switzerland, lady calypsonian, are junk, they should have stuck with the catamarans.

But that said, from here it’s soca to the world.

LINDA CAPILDEO

St James