Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The icon­ic Skin­ner Park, his­tor­i­cal home of the open­ing bout in the fight for the Ca­lyp­so monarch, was trans­formed in­to a sea of ca­lyp­so lovers, sweet kaiso and vibes yes­ter­day dur­ing the biggest ca­lyp­so event in San Fer­nan­do—Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta.

Armed with their cool­ers, chairs, um­brel­las, food, and drinks, thou­sands of pa­trons filled the field and the stands to see and sup­port the 40 con­tes­tants who are vy­ing for a spot in the fi­nals with hopes of de­thron­ing reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Machel Mon­tano.

An­noyed that the show start­ed al­most an hour late with per­for­mances from guest artistes, in­stead of the con­tes­tants, one woman waved toi­let pa­per to ex­press her dis­con­tent.

Once the show kicked off, how­ev­er, pa­trons were not dis­ap­point­ed. Start­ing off the com­pe­ti­tion at 3:16 pm was Jalai “Lani K” Ko­jo with Death Row. Dressed in an or­ange prison over­all com­plete with shack­les, he gave a dra­mat­ic skit of a prison of­fi­cer forc­ing him on­to an elec­tric chair to be ex­e­cut­ed.

Each con­tes­tant brought with them their var­i­ous prompts, in­clud­ing Guardian Me­dia’s own Cas­ton Cu­pid, who had a bed, a red car­pet and a door on stage dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of Knock It.

While mak­ing waves in the so­ca are­na, Akhen­aton “Yung Bred­da” Lewis is a new­com­er to Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, but he was def­i­nite­ly a crowd favourite, with his ren­di­tion of We Rise, a na­tion-build­ing song. “Kaiso Kaiso”, “Big Yard”, “The Judges Like That” were just some of the plac­ards be­ing waved by pa­trons dur­ing his per­for­mance.

Among the line-up were vet­er­an per­form­ers such as for­mer ca­lyp­so mon­archs like Du­ane O’Con­nor and Kurt Allen, a for­mer Chut­ney So­ca monarch Sam­raj “Rik­ki Jai” Jaimun­gal. Mar­lon “Bit­ter Hon­ey” Lee, a pris­on­er who has copped the prison in­mates’ ca­lyp­so monarch sev­er­al times, al­so per­formed.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with sev­er­al pa­trons who were elat­ed to be at the event, and not even the slight show­ers or blaz­ing sun could put a damper on their ex­cite­ment.

“This year I find it bet­ter than last year be­cause it has more com­pet­i­tive songs, and they have bet­ter top­ics to sing about. The rain can­not af­fect this. We come to en­joy our­selves,” said An­tho­ny Richards.

Roger Charles, who was with one of the biggest crews in at­ten­dance—St Mar­garet’s Posse—said he has been at­tend­ing Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta since 1979, when a tick­et was $6, and this year, he paid $250.

Lu­anne Moses said she came from St James, and she was sup­port­ing Ter­ry Lyons, who sang Ask Yuh Man.

Prime Min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young was among a con­tin­gent of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in at­ten­dance. Young was seen meet­ing, greet­ing, and tak­ing pho­tos with pa­trons.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said he was pleased with the pro­duc­tion, and it’s one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed events in South on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar.

Op­po­si­tion M Dr Roodal Mooni­lal was al­so seen walk­ing through the crowd, greet­ing pa­trons and en­joy­ing the show.