Pe­ter Ray Blood

Broth­er Ebony (Fitzroy Joseph) has de­throned The In­cred­i­ble My­ron B (My­ron Bruce) as the Na­tion­al Hu­mor­ous Ca­lyp­so Monarch and tak­en home the top prize of $50,000. Third place was cap­tured by Bun­ny B (Neville Brown), fol­lowed by Snakey (Heav­en Charles) and Nin­ja (Ken­son Nep­tune).

A large au­di­ence was in at­ten­dance for the stag­ing of the 2015 Fi­nal at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day night. The pro­gramme was opened at 8.15 pm by em­cees God­frey Pierre, Tom­my Joseph and Damion Melville and they kept the au­di­ence en­ter­tained through pro­ceed­ings as they in­tro­duced the evening's con­tes­tants.

The night's first guest artiste, Shel­don Nugget, sang his 12-year-old High on Ca­lyp­so and The Spe­cial­ist. In the lat­ter song, Nugget es­tab­lished an ap­pro­pri­ate mood for the evening as he re­lat­ed his plight with his wife who he de­scribed as a corn beef "spe­cial­ist."

Nine con­tes­tants faced the judges in the first of two rounds of com­pe­ti­tion. Of the nine, just a few im­pressed with au­then­tic hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­soes. But, Broth­er Ebony, singing Sign Lan­guage in po­si­tion six, drew sus­tained ap­plause for his cre­ative­ly com­posed song. The em­cee had to re­mind pa­trons that en­cores we1re not giv­en in com­pe­ti­tions as they sus­tained their thun­der­ous ova­tion.

The ac­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion was opened by Mr Mike singing Adult Toy, a song which was cheered by pa­trons. He was fol­lowed by Ka­lyp­so Re­vue's Nin­ja, pop­u­lar­ly known for his parang so­ca dit­ty Parang the Wrong House. Nin­ja ren­dered Lev­el the Play­ing Field, a dit­ty which spoke to women who pos­sessed male ten­den­cies and man­ner­isms. Nin­ja demon­strat­ed good dic­tion, a qual­i­ty main­tained by the next singer, Kid Kalaloo of the Kaiso Kar­a­van tent. His was a well ar­tic­u­lat­ed and de­lib­er­ate de­liv­ery of Deafy Claire.

A peren­ni­al crowd-pleas­er at Kaiso House, Bun­ny B evoked rip­ples of laugh­ter through the au­di­ence when he per­formed Tame, Tame, Tame, his take on once bois­ter­ous politi­cians who had grown 'tame' in the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion. Bun­ny B drama­tised his per­for­mance with sev­er­al stuffed an­i­mals as his props. De­fend­ing monarch The In­cred­i­ble My­ron B sang Ebo­la Scare in po­si­tion sev­en, al­so us­ing sev­er­al props. His song didn't have the same ef­fect on pa­trons it en­joyed three months ago for Car­ni­val. But, My­ron B cred­itably enough in his per­for­mance, sig­nalled that it would on­ly take a knock­out punch to un­seat him as a two-time monarch in this genre of ca­lyp­so.

Hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­so vet­er­an Brown Boy, hail­ing from Kaiso House, sang Cap­tain Row­ley. And, Snakey, com­plete with three male dancers and an en­tire cir­cus set, sang Cyar Rhyme. Too vig­or­ous and an­i­mat­ed in parts of his song, some of Snakey's lyrics were lost in haste.

The judges' pan­el, head­ed by TSTT CEO Ever­ald Snag­gs, in­clud­ed Pe­ter Ray Blood, Lois Lewis, Er­ic Pow­der, Wen­dell Eti­enne, Nor­ma Pad­more Clarke and Fe­lix Ed­in­bor­ough. Among the dig­ni­taries at­tend­ing the show was Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas.

The show re­sumed at 10.35 pm and the sec­ond half, which end­ed at 11.50 pm, was an eas­i­er con­test to judge as the fi­nal­ists could sing any dit­ty they chose, their songs judged in just three cat­e­gories � Ren­di­tion, Pre­sen­ta­tion and Crowd Re­sponse.

Broth­er Ebony again im­pressed in the sec­ond half with his ren­di­tion of My Wife. In this very fun­ny ca­lyp­so, Ebony sang of his dim-wit­ted wife who, pur­chased two 4 1/2 sized shoes when she couldn't get a size nine and, un­able to find the three dai­ly news­pa­pers to buy, bought three Guardians. But, de­spite her short­com­ings, he still loved his wife.

In the sec­ond half, al­most all the fi­nal­ists elicit­ed laugh­ter with fi­nal con­tes­tant Snakey per­form­ing The Dhoti Song.

As the re­sults were tab­u­lat­ed there were guest per­for­mances by Fun­ny and Re­la­tor. Mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was by Cum­mings & D'Wail­ers and al­so among the fi­nal­ists were Broth­er Al­pha, Kid Kalaloo, Brown Boy and Mr Mike.