Car­ol Quash

Brand­ing and re­brand­ing of prod­ucts has be­come a fun­da­men­tal strat­e­gy for any busi­ness try­ing to make a mark in to­day's com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. And it was with this in mind that the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) came up with the term Kaiso­ra­ma to de­scribe the host­ing of two ma­jor com­pe­ti­tions on the same night. "It is a night of cel­e­bra­tions be­cause it is a night of cham­pi­ons. One of the biggest nights in the Car­ni­val sched­ule," said Tu­co's Sec­re­tary Lu­ta­lo "Broth­er Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba.

Evo­lu­tion of an art form

Ac­cord­ing to Masim­ba, the show was ini­tial­ly called San­ti­man­i­tay be­cause the em­pha­sis was placed on the ex­tem­po. Even­tu­al­ly, he said, it be­came known as the Ex­tem­po fi­nals and the Ca­lyp­so by Cat­e­go­ry fi­nals.

New and im­proved

How­ev­er, he said al­though ex­tem­po was not a dy­ing art form, Tu­co felt the need to re­vamp the ex­tem­po com­pe­ti­tion and en­cour­age young artistes to get in the are­na of ex­tem­po, which, he said, could on­ly be a plus for the art form. In ad­di­tion, he said, the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­alised it was time to stim­u­late new in­ter­est in the night's event in gen­er­al. "Tu­co recog­nised that it was time to re­brand the night in or­der to lift the pro­file of the event. Be­cause it is in­deed one of the great­est shows in the Car­ni­val." It's in­her­ent­ly com­pet­i­tive and suc­cess is judged by the wit and in­ge­nu­ity of the per­for­mance. In ad­di­tion, the per­former must be able to think quick­ly on his feet since the sub­jects are hand­ed out on the spot and the lyrics are im­pro­vised," Masim­ba ex­plained. Thus, to quote ex­tem­po gu­ru Mark 'Con­tender' John, he chant­ed:

"Peo­ple buy­ing song and dey win­ning crown

But the Ex­tem­po bard dey have it hard

Pull a top­ic from a hat right away dey must sing on that

Ask Black Sage and Lin­go

Yuh cyar buy ah Ex­tem­po"

In mem­o­ry of Kitch

Masim­ba said Ki­a­so­ra­ma 2010 would be a trib­ute to the Grand­mas­ter Lord Kitch­en­er and would be held at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Feb­ru­ary 11. He said fi­nal­ists in the so­cial com­men­tary cat­e­go­ry of the Ca­lyp­so by Cat­e­go­ry com­pe­ti­tion in­clud­ed Bri­an Lon­don, Dex­ter (The Stinger) Par­sons and Kizzie Ruiz, while Hol­lis (Chalk­dust) Liv­er­pool, Kurt Allen and Win­ston (The Orig­i­nal De­fos­to Him­self) Scar­bor­ough would vie for the po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary ti­tle. An­tho­ny (All Rounder) Hen­drick­son, Ed­win (Crazy) Ay­oung, and Llewellyn (Short Pants) Mac In­tosh would com­pete for the hu­mor­ous com­men­tary ti­tle, Masim­ba said.