Pe­ter Ray Blood

Roy­al­ty reigns tonight at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain when Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF) stages the fi­nals of the Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Groovy and Play Whe Pow­er So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions. Sched­uled to be­gin at 9 pm, the fi­nals are graced by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of no few­er than eight pre­vi­ous mon­archs, and "roy­al­ty" guest stars Vivi­ca Fox, Ta­tiana Ali, Damien Dante Wanans, Dar­rin Ben­son, Ba­by Cham and Pop­caan.

On the top­ic of stars, one of the pre­mier guests tonight is de­fend­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars.

This leg­endary Port-of-Spain steel or­ches­tra is hop­ing to cre­ate his­to­ry at to­mor­row night's fi­nal by be­com­ing on­ly the sec­ond band in the com­pe­ti­tion's his­to­ry to score a hat-trick of wins.

The biggest event in Car­ni­val, and in its 21st year, tonight's Fan­tas­tic Fri­day pro­duc­tion will al­so fea­ture a NL­CB Trib­ute to the Clas­sics seg­ment, fea­tur­ing David Rud­der, Lord Laro and Ron­nie McIn­tosh. McIn­tosh is the 1995 and 1997 So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on and is re­gard­ed as one of the genre's fore­most am­bas­sadors.

In fact, this trio of spe­cial per­form­ers has been cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors for many years, Laro be­ing domi­ciled many years ago in Ja­maica and singing a num­ber of ca­lyp­so hits, in­clud­ing his still pop­u­lar Tem­po.

The 1986 Young Kings and Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch, and Road March cham­pi­on, Rud­der is in a class by him­self.

Twen­ty-sev­en years af­ter his as­tound­ing achieve­ment, Rud­der is a still a ma­jor draw­ing card and is pop­u­lar across the re­gion, Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca.

Tonight, the Groovy So­ca cat­e­go­ry will be con­test­ed first, and will be kicked off by vet­er­an Chut­ney So­ca di­va Dru­patee Ram­goon­ai, singing In­di­an Gyal. Singing first in the Pow­er So­ca cat­e­go­ry is Lil Bitts, ren­der­ing Raise D Dust.

Of in­ter­est is that De­stra and Machel Mon­tano have se­lect­ed the same po­si­tion to per­form in both cat­e­gories; De­stra choos­ing sev­en, and Mon­tano nine.

In the Pow­er So­ca fi­nal Su­perBlue will have the fi­nal say on the night as he sings in po­si­tion 11 as the fi­nal com­peti­tor.

Chal­leng­ing the lo­cal artistes in the Pow­er So­ca fi­nal are two strong re­gion­al fi­nal­ists in Tal­pree from Grena­da and St Vin­cent's Fya Em­press.

Tal­pree, who will be singing Mud­dy Jab, is one of Caribbean's most pop­u­lar so­ca artistes and is an ex­cit­ing per­former.

Singing Rum Please, the Em­press, chris­tened Lor­nette Nedd, is no stranger to lo­cal au­di­ences and ac­tu­al­ly won the NWAC Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Queen ti­tle in Trinidad last year. She is al­so St Vin­cent's reign­ing Road March cham­pi­on and So­ca Monarch.

On Wednes­day, long­stand­ing CPF con­sul­tant Jack Alex­is was float­ing on a high.

He said: "This has been the best year up to now. Things have been mov­ing smooth­ly. The sta­di­um is ready and every­thing is in place. A lot of ex­cite­ment has been gen­er­at­ed and a lot of over­seas vis­i­tors are al­ready here."

CPF com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Kare­na Sukhu em­pha­sised: "We want the pub­lic to know that the VVIP area is not in­clu­sive of food and drinks. We've re­duced ad­mis­sion to this area so pa­trons can have mon­ey in their pock­ets to pur­chase their pre­ferred food and drinks. It has been a very hec­tic week for us as our celebri­ties be­gan ar­riv­ing on Wednes­day."

Sev­er­al state agen­cies have as­sist­ed CPF in stag­ing this enor­mous un­der­tak­ing, one them be­ing the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PTSC).

The com­pa­ny has ex­tend­ed a num­ber of ser­vices to the pub­lic in­clud­ing, on the day of the event, start­ing from 6:30 pm, there will be free park­ing at City Gate, Port-of-Spain.

In­ter­est­ed pa­trons can park their ve­hi­cles and board a des­ig­nat­ed PTSC bus from City Gate to the Sta­di­um and back. The cost of that round trip is $10.

There will al­so be So­ca Monarch brand­ed bus­es on route in the fol­low­ing ar­eas: San Fer­nan­do, Ch­agua­nas and Ari­ma.

These bus­es can be ac­cessed any­where along the routes, with­in the ar­eas iden­ti­fied, and will trans­port pa­trons to the Sta­di­um and back. The cost of that round trip is $10.

It's Car­ni­val Fri­day, a mere month af­ter say­ing farewell to Christ­mas. What makes to­day dif­fer­ent and spe­cial is that be­side the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch fi­nals at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain, the fi­nals of the King and Queen of Car­ni­val will be tak­ing place at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. This is one of the ad­just­ments made this year to the tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val agen­da.

Look­ing at the cos­tumes at the semi­fi­nals last Tues­day night, I was re­al­ly im­pressed by a few.

Among the kings, Ger­ard Weekes as AiTo Yu­jo Yoroko­bi (The Joy of Love & Friend­ship), from Bri­an Mac Far­lane's band; Let There Be Light, por­trayed by Earl Thomp­son, for Is­land­peo­ple Mas' Re-Hu­man­ize; De Agony of Hu­man Bondage, played by Ronald Blaize, for Lega­cy's Trin­ba­go to Rio; and, Ted Eu­stace as Moko in Flames, from Tri­ni Rev­ellers' Brazil Brazil.

Of the queens, if on­ly for orig­i­nal­i­ty, my favourite is Da­nis Wan­taim–The Dance of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, por­trayed by Liselle Frauen­felder, for D' Krewe's pre­sen­ta­tion of Zia. Weekes' cos­tume is re­al­ly a joy to be­hold and is per­fect­ly made.

I am Car­ni­val is the theme of Sun­day night's re­tooled Di­manche Gras in the Sa­van­nah.

Void of the fi­nals of the King and Queen of Car­ni­val, and the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch, the pro­duc­tion is be­ing mar­ket­ed as "a galaxy of stars from the realms of ca­lyp­so, so­ca, steel­pan, mu­sic, mas, chut­ney so­ca, dance, the­atre and com­e­dy."

Ex­pect­ed to in­clude the cham­pi­ons of C2K13, the pot­pour­ri of the best of T&T per­form­ing arts in­cludes Shad­ow, Black Stal­in, David Rud­der, Su­perBlue, Dru­patee, Rik­ki Jai, Bun­ji Gar­lin, Fay Ann Lyons, Sug­ar Aloes, Denise Bel­fon, Rachel Price, Nik­ki Cros­by and Pene­lope Spencer.

Show­time is 7 pm.

Or­der of ap­pear­ance

Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Groovy Monarch

1. Dru­patee–In­di­an Gyal

2. Na­dia Bat­son–Man­ag­er

3. Denise Bel­fon–Win­ing Queen

4. Ravi B–Pre­scrip­tion

5. Ben­jai–Feter

6. Farmer Nap­py–Stranger

7. De­stra Gar­cia–Call My Name

8. Patrice Roberts–A Lit­tle Wine

9. Machel Mon­tano–The Fog

10. Iw­er George–Bub­ble

11. Blaxx–Nah Get Away

Play Whe In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er Monarch

1. Lil Bitts–Raise D Dust

2. Fya Em­press–Rum Please

3. Tal­pree–Mud­dy Jab

4. De­von Matthews–Start It Up

5. Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter–We Con­trol D Road

6. Ben­jai–En­go­ma

7. De­stra Gar­cia–Car­ry On

8. JW & Blaze–Tim­ing It

9. Machel Mon­tano–Float

10. Swap­pi 4D–Cha-os

11. Su­perBlue–Fan­tas­tic Fri­day?