Sto­ry and pho­tos by

Nigel Teles­ford

Grena­di­an So­ca Monarch Mud­dy (Alex Cuffie) de­liv­ered an un­ex­pect­ed jolt of Jab en­er­gy at Si­ete Events’ French Toast Break­fast Cool­er Par­ty last Sun­day morn­ing, giv­ing pa­trons a tan­ta­lis­ing pre­view of what he is bring­ing to Trinidad Car­ni­val 2026.

Tak­ing the stage just af­ter Lyrikal had warmed up the crowd, Mud­dy seam­less­ly added his hit song Pay­roll to the sound­track of what has be­come one of the Car­ni­val sea­son’s most pop­u­lar and of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised break­fast par­ties.

“We just give dem a lil taste of it,” Mud­dy said af­ter­ward. “I know it’s ear­ly still, so we didn’ want to bring out de mud and de oil yet, but we bring de heat and de jab en­er­gy to wake up de place!”

Heat, in­deed, was a defin­ing fac­tor of the morn­ing. Tem­per­a­tures climbed to as high as 31 de­grees Cel­sius, and while the se­mi-shad­ed Queen’s Hall Gar­den Sanc­tu­ary main­tained a cool, re­laxed au­ra ear­ly on, con­di­tions changed once the clocks ticked past 10 am. As the sun in­ten­si­fied, near­ly 2,000 pa­trons shed their wor­ries and stress­es and com­mit­ted ful­ly to the fete.

Si­ete Events di­rec­tor Glee­son Job ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that re­lo­cat­ing the event af­ter sev­er­al years at The An­chor­age ef­fec­tive­ly meant start­ing afresh.

“Si­ete Events has been host­ing the French Toast Break­fast Par­ty for six years now,” Job said. “But in mov­ing from The An­chor­age to this new venue, we re­alised it was like hav­ing a new event, with dif­fer­ent chal­lenges and lo­gis­tics. For in­stance, we nev­er had a prob­lem with food at The An­chor­age, but here the food fin­ished ahead of sched­ule. We’ve tak­en notes and will do a post-mortem, so we can ad­dress the chal­lenges and come big­ger and bet­ter in 2027.”

Known for its hearty Car­ni­val break­fast of­fer­ings and strong en­ter­tain­ment line­up, Si­ete Events large­ly de­liv­ered on both fronts. Many pa­trons en­joyed their fill of food, mu­sic or—more of­ten—both. Live per­for­mances by Tevin Hart­man, Lyrikal, Mud­dy, Full Blown and the “Viking of So­ca”, Bun­ji Gar­lin, sent the crowd in­to a sus­tained fren­zy that on­ly sub­sided un­der the re­lent­less mid­day sun.

By 11 am, the blaz­ing sun bore down mer­ci­less­ly on the rev­el­ry. De­spite strate­gic in­vest­ments in mul­ti­ple cool­ers, bars and bev­er­age sam­pling sta­tions, lit­tle could ful­ly counter the heat, hu­mid­i­ty and the vol­canic so­ca erup­tions un­fold­ing on stage. Still, sat­is­fied that most ex­pec­ta­tions had been met, Job and the Si­ete Events team were es­pe­cial­ly pleased with the in­clu­sion of their Grena­di­an guest.

“Last Grena­da Car­ni­val, Pay­roll was my favourite song,” Job ad­mit­ted. “So when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came to add Mud­dy to the cast, we wel­comed it. We want to thank Dex­ter Thomas for bring­ing him and thank Mud­dy for bless­ing us with de Jab vibes.”

Bun­ji Gar­lin and Fay Ann Lyons ar­rived in match­ing Land Rovers, ac­com­pa­nied by spe­cial guests, though on­ly Bun­ji took to the stage. Hosts Whit­ney Hus­bands and Ken Sim­mons had lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty coax­ing the most­ly fe­male au­di­ence from shad­ed com­fort back to the front of the stage. Brav­ing the heat, they raised hands, flags, drinks, legs and hair­styles in trib­ute to the mul­ti­ple So­ca Monarch and Road March win­ner.

Car­ni­val, un­mis­tak­ably, has be­gun.