Nigel Teles­ford

One of the hottest and most pop­u­lar per­form­ers of Car­ni­val 2025, Yung Bred­da (Akhen­aton Lewis), was not al­lowed to en­ter Fete Roy­al at Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege last Sat­ur­day, in time for his ap­point­ed ap­pear­ance time dur­ing Kes The Band’s set around 10.30 pm. In­stead, the singer of The Great­est Bend Over was oblig­ed to go to an­oth­er event first. He even­tu­al­ly re­turned around mid­night.

While apolo­gies were lat­er is­sued and ac­cept­ed back­stage, and Lewis hugged, joked, and took self­ies with the woman re­spon­si­ble, her ex­cuse that she did not know who he was ear­li­er that night seemed in­cred­u­lous.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, such is­sues, have long been preva­lent in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try.

The is­sues at Fete Roy­al con­tin­ued all night long—from long lines for small por­tions of food, a near ri­ot for pro­mo­tion­al cups in a pop­u­lar bev­er­age booth, to the lack of shel­ter from a down­pour of rain.

Bun­ji Gar­lin, Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez and young Syri Lyons-Al­varez added tremen­dous val­ue with their pre­sen­ta­tion on­stage and a guest ap­pear­ance by the leg­end him­self, Su­perBlue (Austin Lyons), com­plet­ed the Lega­cy theme of the night.

The head­line act, Machel Mon­tano’s lega­cy con­tri­bu­tion came in the form of a $250,000 do­na­tion to the in­sti­tu­tion. The reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch had his voice back in pris­tine con­di­tion and used his com­mand­ing pres­ence to re­in­force his “Pardy” cam­paign for the Road March ti­tle.

For the alum­ni as­sem­bled in im­pres­sive num­bers, the ap­pear­ance of Pe­ter Min­shall’s Tan Tan and Sagaboy char­ac­ters dur­ing Mon­tano’s set was a wel­come thrill.

A roar of ap­proval and wel­come al­so greet­ed the song­writ­ing sib­lings known as Full Blown En­ter­tain­ment ear­li­er in the night and the video of Fay-Ann and Syri Lyons-Al­varez mash­ing up the crowd has been go­ing vi­ral on­line since it was post­ed a few days lat­er.

Many pro­fes­sion­al feters said the vibes at Fete Roy­al 10 were much more en­ter­tain­ing than the ma­jor­i­ty of the pre­vi­ous school fetes and de­spite the afore­men­tioned is­sues, it was an en­joy­able night un­der the icon­ic QRC clock tow­er.