An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

CEO of Southex, George Singh, de­scribed Fri­day night’s Chut­ney So­ca Monarch semi­fi­nal as a clear suc­cess, as a large crowd packed Fla­va Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah for the first time in the event’s his­to­ry.

“The turnout was ex­cel­lent at Fla­va. I think peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly came to see the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Semi­fi­nal be­cause the front of the area where the stage is was filled to ca­pac­i­ty,” Singh told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The semi­fi­nal fea­tured 34 artistes and ran from just af­ter 7.15 pm to short­ly af­ter mid­night, with pa­trons stay­ing un­til the end. Singh said there had been scep­ti­cism about stag­ing the event in Port-of-Spain, but the re­sponse ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.

“A lot of peo­ple were scep­ti­cal about us com­ing in­to Port-of-Spain, but I felt con­fi­dent that com­ing to Fla­va Vil­lage would be a suc­cess, and it was def­i­nite­ly a suc­cess. The show it­self was a very good show.”

The night was marked by cross-cul­tur­al col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Chut­ney, So­ca, and Ca­lyp­so artistes, some­thing Singh de­scribed as unique to the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch stage. Among those ap­pear­ing were La­dy Gyp­sy, Free­town Col­lec­tive, Os­car B with Star­gram, and the Mau Bros.

A stand­out mo­ment came when 95-year-old Lord Nel­son took to the stage in sup­port of the Mau Bros, joined by Rawytee Ram­roop in their col­lab­o­ra­tion Com­ing Home.

Singh said there was a brief pause to the show af­ter KI Per­sad faint­ed while leav­ing the stage fol­low­ing his per­for­mance. Fire of­fi­cers re­spond­ed, and Per­sad was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal. Southex con­firmed he was de­hy­drat­ed and was re­cov­er­ing at home. De­spite the set­back, KI qual­i­fied for the fi­nal.

At­ten­tion now turns to the Grand Fi­nal, where de­fend­ing cham­pi­on So­ca King Machel Mon­tano will face 14 oth­er con­tenders for the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch, Queen of Chut­ney So­ca, and Tra­di­tion­al Chut­ney Monarch ti­tles.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd is one of the spon­sors of the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch.

Fi­nal­ists

Star­gram & Os­car B

La­dy La­va

Shi­va Lakhan

Mr D.G.

Mas­ter Saleem

Ari

Adesh Sama­roo

Wack­er­man

KI Per­sad

Savi­ta Singh

Rasi­ka Din­di­al

Dad­dy Chi­nee

Nur­iz­za

Mau Bros