Kevon Felmine

Fri­day night's edi­tion of the 30th Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­sic Fes­ti­val Cham­pi­onship was filled with qual­i­ty in which South's top per­form­ers stole the show, tak­ing six of out nine tro­phies avail­able. Lead­ing the way was Point Fortin-based chorale, Je­unes Agape who brought down the house with two ec­sta­t­ic per­for­mances in the Sir Beetham Shield Folk Song Choir and the Joslynne Sealey Tro­phy for Ca­lyp­so Chorale.

Though the event at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do, at­tract­ed a small crowd, it was by far the largest pa­tron­age of the south­ern edi­tion of the fes­ti­val so far. The group cat­e­gories proved to be the most en­ter­tain­ing on the night and it took the in­ter­na­tion­al ad­ju­di­cat­ing pan­el of Dr Car­oli­na Gam­boa-Hoyos, Dr Richard Tang Yuk, Dr Roger Hen­ry and Dr Gre­go­ry Simms less than one minute to de­lib­er­ate over the win­ner.

Per­form­ing Men Smart, Women Smarter by King Ra­dio and Machel Mon­tano's Mag­ic Drum in the Ca­lyp­so Chorale, Je­unes Agape took the show away from an ex­cel­lent Poly Alum­ni Choir rep­re­sent­ing the North and the tal­ent­ed To­bag­on­ian choir Sig­nalite Chorale. Dr Hen­ry who had the dif­fi­cult task in the ini­tial round of the com­pe­ti­tion in se­lect­ing both North and South fi­nal­ists, ex­pressed his sat­is­fac­tion at how well the groups had im­proved their en­sem­bles, bal­ance and pitch.

He said the de­ci­sion for that cat­e­go­ry was eas­i­ly made and that he was ex­treme­ly ho­n­oured and over­joyed to award Je­unes Agape the tro­phy fol­low­ing their beau­ti­ful per­for­mance. In the Folk Song Choir class where Je­unes Agape came up against To­ba­go's Ma­son Hall Vil­lage Coun­cil Folk Per­form­ers, it all came down to which group sang in uni­son and had the best tun­ing and arrange­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Tang Yuk, the south cham­pi­ons were able to pro­vide just what was re­quired.

But not all re­sults on the night were eas­i­ly de­cid­ed up­on as the ad­ju­di­ca­tors took ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 min­utes to an­nounce the win­ner in the Folk Song So­lo-Gent cat­e­go­ry. Im­pa­tient pa­trons who could not bear the sus­pense be­gan soft­ly ap­plaud­ing the judges who had to ask for more time to an­nounce a win­ner.

The two com­peti­tors-Bruce Greenidge rep­re­sent­ing the North and Stephan Fur­longe rep­re­sent­ing the South-per­formed the­atri­cal and hu­mourous pieces which were well loved by the au­di­ence. How­ev­er it was Fur­longe per­form­ing Bud­dy Lin­do who was award­ed the Edric Con­nor Memo­r­i­al. Lead­ing the fight for the north­ern­ers was An­dre Man­gatal who won the Dr Dor­rell Philip Tro­phy 2 in the Broad­way Mu­si­cal So­lo.

In de­liv­er­ing the re­sult, Hen­ry ex­plained that in Broad­way mu­si­cal the chal­lenge is to blend the won­der­ful soul­ful singing with pas­sion­ate act­ing in which Man­gatal so beau­ti­ful­ly did. The Cham­pi­onship rounds con­tin­ues to­mor­row at the Na­pari­ma Bowl.

Re­sults:

Na­tion­al Na­tion-Build­ing Song Steel­pan So­lo (Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism 50th In­de­pen­dence An­niver­sary Tropy 18)

Jonathon Grant-South

Vet­er­an's Vo­cal So­lo (Juli­et Lit­tlepage Eck­els Tro­phy)

Harold Woodroffe-South

Acoustic Gui­tar So­lo (News­day Cup)

Seth Es­calante-North

Jazz So­lo (TTMA Tro­phy)

Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray-South

Folk Song So­lo-Ladies ( Dr George H Wat­t­ley Tro­phy)

Nao­mi Ado­nis-Wood­s­ley