Kali­fa Clyne

Car­ni­val 2015 busi­ness was neat­ly tied up yes­ter­day as so­ca artistes re­ceived prizes for the two main so­ca com­pe­ti­tions–the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans (Tu­co) Road March com­pe­ti­tion and the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.The first prize, from Di­a­mond Mo­tors in part­ner­ship with Blink/bmo­bile as well as Vibe CT-105 fm, was dis­trib­uted to reign­ing Road March cham­pi­on Machel Mon­tano. It took place at Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

Mon­tano re­ceived his fifth Mit­subishi Lancer, jok­ing that he had the oth­ers parked in his yard and that three of them were in great con­di­tion.While Mon­tano had pre­vi­ous­ly said he would be with­draw­ing from com­pe­ti­tions, he hint­ed that this might al­so ap­ply to the Road March, where the win­ner was cho­sen by the peo­ple.

Mon­tano, who has joked about re­turn­ing the fol­low­ing year to get the prize at pre­vi­ous prize-giv­ing cer­e­monies, said next year might be dif­fer­ent."I wish I could say I would see you again next year but my plans have been chang­ing a lot late­ly."Mon­tano said his plan was to con­tribute mu­sic geared to­ward heal­ing the world.

Dur­ing his sec­ond prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the day, as he ac­cept­ed his $2 mil­lion as the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) Pow­er So­ca Monarch, Mon­tano said his fo­cus would be on cross­ing over in­to the main­stream mu­sic in­dus­try.As he re­peat­ed that this year would be his last as a com­peti­tor in the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, Mon­tano was cheer­ful­ly heck­led by his so­ca col­leagues.

Fel­low so­ca artiste Dex­ter Stew­art (Blaxx) shout­ed: "Oh yes. Thank you."Mon­tano smiled and ac­knowl­edged the com­ment be­fore adding that he in­tend­ed to be a part of the com­pe­ti­tion, in ei­ther an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty or as part of the au­di­ence."I do not leave with a heavy heart but with an open mind," Mon­tano said.

To the younger com­peti­tors, he ad­vised that they be en­cour­aged to el­e­vate their stan­dards.Less than an hour ear­li­er, the com­peti­tors re­ceived their ap­pear­ance fees and prizes at the Dig­i­cel Groovy Monarch prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny.Olatun­ji Year­wood, who won the com­pe­ti­tion in Feb­ru­ary, re­ceived his cheque for $1 mil­lion, while his fel­low com­peti­tors re­ceived their prizes.

Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Lin­coln Dou­glas en­cour­aged them to con­tin­ue rais­ing the bar in the so­ca mu­sic in­dus­try, promis­ing that his min­istry would con­tin­ue to sup­port di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through cul­ture.