DAVID CUFFY

Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do was sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed when Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, the semi­fi­nal round of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion kicked off in broil­ing hot sun at 12.20 pm yes­ter­day. The Na­tion­al An­them was played by house band Er­rol Ince Mu­sic Mak­ers be­fore a crowd com­prised main­ly of "poss­es," with mem­bers mak­ing colour­ful state­ments in hues of green, yel­low, tan­ger­ine, red, blue and pink. Show host Wen­dell Eti­enne called on Broth­er D'Abreau to of­fer prayers be­fore in­tro­duc­ing guest artiste, vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Pow­er (Son­ny Fran­cois) who of­fered Cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ah Com­ing for which he re­ceived gen­uine ap­plause.

First of the 40 com­peti­tors was Shel­don Nugget (Shel­don Bullen) do­ing Then We Will Rise. A no­tice­able fea­ture of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing band Mu­sic Mak­ers was the num­ber of "crack­shot" mu­si­cians en­gaged, in­clu­sive of Wayne Bruno, Le­ston Paul, "Sun­shine" Di­az, An­tho­ny Woodruffe, Pel­ham God­dard, Earl Caruth and Von­rick May­nard. The au­di­ence had grown con­sid­er­ably by the time sec­ond com­peti­tor Blaxx (Dex­ter Stew­art) had tak­en the stage to de­liv­er Good Time. And when Heather Mc In­tosh did Keep It in third po­si­tion, the Park was rapid­ly fill­ing with pa­trons.

The "Mighty Midget" Cro Cro (We­st­on Rawl­ins) ap­peared in fourth po­si­tion singing Com­pare and Con­trast for which au­di­ence ap­pre­ci­a­tion was ex­pressed with calls for his re­turn to the stage for an en­core. How­ev­er, such a re­quest can­not be en­ter­tained in com­pe­ti­tion. Fol­low­ing sub­mis­sions from Dil­ly Suede (Dil­lon Thomas) and Cather­ine Williams, an­oth­er for­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch Sug­ar Aloes (Michael Os­una) was able to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive au­di­ence re­ac­tion to his se­lec­tion Not One Word. It was, how­ev­er, Daz (Win­ston Noel) who had the au­di­ence laugh­ing up­roar­i­ous­ly to the rib-tick­ling com­po­si­tion Fork In Nap­kin. By 3.30 pm 18 of the 40 con­tes­tants had ap­peared on stage, and Skin­ner park was on the verge of burst­ing at its seams.