Randy Glasgow to create new calypso competition for soca, chutney artistes

Randy Glasgow Productions is known for events like Ladies Night Out and the Alternative International Comedy Festival, but come 2025 he wants to add a calypso competition for soca and chutney artistes to his events list.

The absence of the Soca Monarch for over two years took away a platform for many evolving artistes and some of them were frustrated, he said in a phone interview with Newsday.

On February 19, he discussed his plans for the competition.

Glasgow said, “We (Randy Glasgow Productions) are firmly of the opinion that a lot of talent lies within the soca fraternity and the young artistes.”

He said two years passed and no consideration was given to young soca artistes with reference to having a competition. The International Soca Monarch was last held in 2020 and its winners were Iwer George and Kes with Stage Gone Bad. The competition ran uninterrupted for 27 years and gave visibility to some of soca's most prominent figures today.

“It is important and I feel the vision is lost and there is no vision where that is concerned. Soca music is the engine of the Carnival.

“If you don’t have good soca music people will be walking the streets instead of jumping on the streets.”

A lot of effort and energy needed to be placed in developing soca music and encourage it, he added.

Different competitions helped to do this, Glasgow said.

“What we realise also to afford the soca artistes more opportunities we were thinking of a competition which would also help calypso. This was before Machel (Montano) came into the calypso,” Glasgow said.

Montano entered this year’s Calypso Monarch and won.

While Glasgow wants to provide a platform for young singers, he also wants to help develop the genre.

He said this type of competition would help calypso, as it should drive an influx of younger people to it and these younger people would bring their fan bases with them.

This was a win/win for the genre, he added.

Glasgow said he hopes corporate sponsors come on board and added that he has been in discussion with five of them thus far. He said things were “looking interesting” from these sponsors.

Initially, he had plans of hosting the event for Carnival 2024 but that did not materialise.

Glasgow said he had contacted National Carnival Commission (NCC) chairman Winston “Gypsy” Peters who said it could not happen as the commission had no money.

“Things like that must not happen in the future and we are confident people will see the vision. Sponsors will see the vision.”

Hosting the competition was not only important for the genre’s evolution, he said, but to also help Trinidad and Tobago’s upcoming generations preserve the culture and fulfil their promise and dreams.

This is why he has called on every corporate citizen to get involved.

“You see what Machel did. Machel came across to the calypso; he brought his fans, he sounded good, the youths saw this is feasible...I don’t just have to rely on soca to make a living because the soca industry is a tough one.”

He said if young singers did not have a hit and could not pull a crowd, promoters would not hire them.

He added that they can rely on not only soca but calypso and there were a lot more opportunities where calypso was concerned.

Without revealing too much, Glasgow said the company intended to do things differently as opposed to what is done by the National Carnival Commission (NCC) and other governmental organisations.

Glasgow said he intended to bring youthful vigour to his event and wanted to get younger people to like calypso and make it hip.

“It will take some different doing, some non-traditional things and, you know, there are organisations steadfast on certain things and how it is done and so forth, we would not get far with that, so it is going to be different.”

Glasgow said he did not have a name for the event as yet but was playing with some ideas and intended to consult with younger people.

The overall aim of the event is “to make calypso infectious, groovy. "

“All the different elements that they apply to soca can be used in calypso and I think the results will be phenomenal,” Glasgow said.

For growth and development, TT must pay attention to its young talent, Glasgow said.

He added that it needed to be impressed on others that youths had to be taken care of and if TT did not, they could be easily influenced by negative forces.

“They are hyper. They are living on their computer, phone, social media. They are seeing what the whole world is doing and if they are in their own cocoon and things can’t happen, you are frustrating them.”