Kali­fa Clyne

The say­ing the voice of the peo­ple is the voice of God was no truer yes­ter­day than when the youngest artiste in his­to­ry Aaron St Louis (Voice) took home the ti­tle of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch 2016.

It comes four years af­ter he failed to cap­ture the win in his fi­nal per­for­mance at the Syn­er­gy So­ca Star sea­son sev­en.

At 23, the artiste is en­joy­ing his first year of break­away suc­cess with a pow­er­ful, up­lift­ing and pro­gres­sive so­ca track that fete-go­ers have been singing word for word.

St Louis per­formed Cheers to Life on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day night, wear­ing a white and gold suit, and stand­ing be­tween two mas­sive cham­pagne bot­tles.

His in­tro­duc­to­ry video was a video of reg­gae icon Bob Mar­ley in an in­ter­view where the artiste was asked about rich­es and shut down the in­ter­view­er with the state­ment that rich­es were not mon­ey.

St Louis fo­cused on his vo­cals and while he said the re­sults didn't mat­ter to him, the big screens flash­ing the word "Win­ner" in bright, big, gold let­ters, and the grin on his face as he ex­it­ed the stage fol­low­ing his per­for­mance spoke of con­fi­dence and sat­is­fac­tion with his ef­fort.

Min­utes af­ter the stage was cleared for the fi­nal artiste, de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Olatun­ji Year­wood, to per­form, the pa­trons who had filled out the sta­di­um con­tin­ued to re­peat the cho­rus of "cheers to life."

The So­ca Monarch sup­port­ers screamed his name when asked if they had seen their win­ner.

Plac­ing sec­ond was 24-year-old Akeem Chance (Preedy), who is an­oth­er first-time fi­nal­ist at the event with his song Vet­er­an.

Preedy de­liv­ered his per­for­mance with a vo­cals warm-up as he walked to­wards the mi­cro­phone at the cen­tre of the stage and, cool as can be in his char­coal three-piece suit, be­gan singing Richard Nap­py May­ers' bring back the Ole Time Days.

He crooned the lyrics of Lord Kitch­en­er's Sug­ar Bum Bum be­fore segue­ing in­to the lyrics of Vet­er­an with "Do you re­mem­ber when?"

On the screens at the side of the stage, videos of Wendy Fitzwilliam's Miss Uni­verse win, na­tion­al crick­et icon Bri­an Lara and T&T Olympic win­ning mo­ments ac­com­pa­nied his per­for­mance which took a nos­tal­gic stroll through the pa­trons' psy­che.

Preedy was al­so giv­en a "bless­ing" by ca­lyp­son­ian David Rud­der.

In a draw for third place was so­ca songstress Patrice Roberts and Dex­ter Stew­art (Blaxx) in per­haps his great­est per­for­mance in so­ca his­to­ry with the song that evoked the sec­ond biggest re­ac­tion from the au­di­ence.

Blaxx had the au­di­ence thrilled as he brought the fire and rhythm sec­tion and the dut­ty mas, and flaw­less­ly used fog and warm or­ange lights that glowed on the faces of drum­mers, adding an ex­cit­ing and some­what sin­is­ter at­mos­phere to the the­atri­cal per­for­mance.

He went so far as to at­tempt to try the fire-breath­ing trick him­self, though it seemed that he al­most had an ac­ci­dent on stage.

Patrice, in a per­for­mance that was fun and showed her amaz­ing skill at wardrobe changes in a mat­ter of sec­onds, made good use of the pow­er­ful vo­cals she is known for.

There were some shaky mo­ments in her de­liv­ery but for the most part the songstress de­liv­ered and had flag crews re­act­ing in a fren­zy as her fi­nal mo­ment on stage saw her tech­ni­cal team shoot­ing out dol­lar bills along with con­fet­ti in­to the crowd.

Pa­trons were awed by the fact that as com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, al­most every per­former de­liv­ered more than mind-blow­ing per­for­mances.

New­com­er Ptern­sky, who was the on­ly com­peti­tor to sing a dance­hall song at the so­ca event, spent more time than nec­es­sary ser­e­nad­ing and prais­ing Ja­maican pro­duc­er Kurt Ri­ley.

He sang that it wasn't about the com­pe­ti­tion for him, which was for­tu­nate as the au­di­ence did not show much ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the per­for­mance.

Pa­trons were over­heard say­ing it was the best So­ca Monarch ex­pe­ri­ence in years.

This came as a sur­prise to many who had been strong­ly crit­i­cal of the event.

This year, scalpers were out­side sell­ing tick­ets for as low as $50 for the VIP sec­tion and prac­ti­cal­ly giv­ing away gen­er­al tick­ets.

But the sta­di­um, which had small hand­fuls be­fore 11 pm, filled al­most com­plete­ly by mid­night.

The show start­ed with sev­en min­utes of fire­works which saw pa­trons look­ing up in awe and al­so in fright as residue from the Ro­man can­dles float­ed down in­to the VIP sec­tion.

Then it was time for the Break­out artiste com­peti­tors–Jadel and Salty.

Jadel was the even­tu­al win­ner of the cat­e­go­ry.

Salty, who seemed to have added vers­es to a song which was lyri­cal­ly de­fi­cient by most stan­dards, thrilled au­di­ences with his ren­di­tion of Girl Meets Brass.

His per­for­mance was promis­ing and pre­ced­ed a very strong per­for­mance from Grena­di­an duo Cloud 5 with their song No Be­hav­iour.

As the duo de­scend­ed on­to the stage bring­ing their jab in­va­sion from Grena­da to Port-of-Spain, the crowd, lulled in­to com­fort by a lengthy per­for­mance from Chut­ney So­ca Monarch K.I, came alive with the in­tent to jump and wave and mis­be­have.

While the duo per­formed in suits which looked more like nin­ja wear than alien chic, pa­trons cheered their ap­proval, singing along to the lyrics.

M1 aka Men­ace fol­lowed up on the en­er­gy re­leased by the jab men, with a pre­sen­ta­tion that was the­atri­cal and seam­less.

M1 re-en­act­ed a J'Ou­vert scene on the stage, com­plete with both the tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters of moko jumbies, fire-blow­ing dev­ils and mid­night rob­bers and the more promi­nent reg­u­lar short pants and T-shirt wear­ing rev­ellers. His white T-shirt and pants be­came a can­vas for the "dut­ty mas" play­ers who took the pris­tine clean­li­ness as an in­vi­ta­tion to share in paint and mud, and he per­formed and sang his song with­out a hic­cup, as his team backed him on stage.

The two Ba­jans fol­lowed next, Pe­ter Ram with a hype song whose un­der­whelm­ing per­for­mance was backed by high en­er­gy dancers. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his en­er­gy didn't seem to peak at the same lev­el.

Hy­pa Sounds chose to fetishize the Catholic school­girl look with dancers on chairs gy­rat­ing to his ex­cel­lent de­liv­ery on vo­cals. He fo­cused on his song, which has been a hit on lo­cal air­waves and at fetes.

As host Sun­ny Bling an­nounced the next artistes, prop men brought nine-foot ban­ners with the words, "T&T Land of the Free," em­bla­zoned in na­tion­al colours.

So­ca artiste Lyrikal, dressed in a mas cos­tume, set the stage with a repli­ca of a shed with a gas lamp il­lu­mi­nat­ing dancers who por­trayed slaves pri­or to 1838. With tas­sa dancers and steel­pan he brought en­er­gy.

In a se­ries of what seemed to be en­dorse­ments from more pop­u­lar and es­tab­lished artists, maybe a po­ten­tial chang­ing of the guard, Sekon Sta was giv­en singing sup­port by vo­cal­ist Na­dia Bat­son who joined him on the track Mag­ic, to the crowd's scream­ing ap­proval.

Lat­er, Ri­car­do Drue would be en­dorsed by for­mer So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on Bun­ji Gar­lin.