Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Six­teen ju­nior Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, in­clud­ing reign­ing monarch Nata­ki Thomp­son, will be pro­ceed­ing to the fi­nal round of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch on Feb­ru­ary 25, af­ter they re­ceived the ap­proval of judges dur­ing yes­ter­day’s semi­fi­nal event.

The young artistes gath­ered at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to put their cre­ativ­i­ty and lyri­cism to the test as they per­formed a va­ri­ety of top­ics from their fu­ture as­pi­ra­tions to hu­mor­ous child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and even sharp cri­tiques on cur­rent af­fairs and the adults around them as the com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­ued.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the event, spe­cial ad­vis­er to the com­pe­ti­tion Tho­ra Best said she was pleased with the qual­i­ty of ca­lyp­soes and pre­sen­ta­tions.

She not­ed while some of the songs per­formed were writ­ten with some help from par­ents and teach­ers, she still felt that there was strong in­ter­est among young­sters in the art form and felt that ca­lyp­so as a genre was “alive and well,” re­fer­ring to cur­rent ca­lyp­so stars who had their be­gin­nings in the ju­nior cat­e­go­ry.

“I can speak for the ju­niors be­cause this year we had 98 en­trants across the zones, and to me, that’s a healthy num­ber, so I think the art form is in a good place.

“At this time, we have a lot of the ju­niors who have grad­u­at­ed to be­ing se­niors: Tazyah O’Con­nor, Chuc­k­ee, Karene As­che, Aaron Dun­can, all of them passed through here. Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so will be 50 years old next year, so you can just imag­ine.”

Best said while there can on­ly be one Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch, the com­pe­ti­tion al­so in­clud­ed prizes based on top­ics and school zone/area, which en­sured that par­tic­i­pants had a chance to win awards, even if they did not qual­i­fy to win the com­pe­ti­tion.

The chil­dren, sup­port­ed by back­up singers and mu­si­cians, were in­tro­duced amidst up­roar­i­ous ap­plause from spec­ta­tors gath­ered in the build­ing just off the Sa­van­nah’s paved en­trance.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, 14-year-old Aniyah Lawrence, who sang No Short­cut to Suc­cess, said that more than sim­ply win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion, she hoped that the song’s mes­sage would in­spire her peers to com­mit them­selves to­wards achiev­ing their goals.

She said the song was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant to her as it re­mind­ed young peo­ple that the eas­i­er way of achiev­ing suc­cess was not al­ways the best.

“It (the song) does res­onate with me a lot. You re­al­ly have to work hard for what you want; you can’t take short­cuts, you have to per­se­vere, and you have to have dis­ci­pline.”

Lawrence said de­spite be­ing rel­a­tive­ly new to per­form­ing af­ter hav­ing start­ed singing for the first time ear­li­er this year, she was pleased with her per­for­mance.

An­oth­er per­former, 19-year-old Jor­dan Bap­tiste, who sang The Beast, took aim at on­go­ing prob­lems of crime and vi­o­lence as she urged lis­ten­ers to turn away from such ills and seek com­fort in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

The stu­dent who at­tends Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va, said this was her first time com­pet­ing and she was hap­py to be able to per­form.

“I want­ed to sing a song that gave glo­ry to God and warned peo­ple about the im­pact of vi­o­lence on T&T. Vi­o­lence in T&T is de­stroy­ing us as a na­tion, and in or­der to rise above it, we need to turn to God.”