When busi­ness­man William Munroe, a long­stand­ing pa­tron of ca­lyp­so, or­gan­ised the first So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion more than three decades ago, his vi­sion was for an en­tire show where so­ca lovers could par­ty and ex­press them­selves.

In the ear­ly 1990s when Munroe went in pur­suit of that dream, so­ca was al­ready an es­tab­lished mu­si­cal genre but was on­ly grant­ed an oc­ca­sion­al cameo in the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, which to this day con­tin­ues to be dom­i­nat­ed by so­cial and po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary.

From the first So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion in 1993, the event grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty, fea­tur­ing the Road March con­tenders and pro­vid­ing the mu­si­cal con­tent for pre-Car­ni­val fetes and the pa­rade of the bands.

By the time the com­pe­ti­tion was re­brand­ed In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM) in 1996—a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion be­cause for the first time acts from around the world were el­i­gi­ble to com­pete—it had be­come one of the ma­jor events in T&T Car­ni­val.

It be­came syn­ony­mous with Car­ni­val Fri­day, which be­came known as Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, and at­tract­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion by so­ca heavy­weights from across the Caribbean, as well as sell-out crowds.

With ti­tles at stake for Pow­er So­ca and Groovy So­ca, ISM was, at its peak, one of the most high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed events on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar.

From the start, the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion at­tract­ed the best in the busi­ness. The first fi­nal was held on Feb­ru­ary 11, 1993, at The Spec­trum, a venue lo­cat­ed on the site now oc­cu­pied by Movi­eTowne, and fea­tured a line­up that in­clud­ed Spar­row, Shad­ow, Gyp­sy, Crazy and Baron.

Su­perBlue won that first ti­tle with Bac­cha­nal Time and went on to win the com­pe­ti­tion sev­en times —a record that re­mains un­beat­en.

Sad­ly, de­spite this and many oth­er mem­o­rable So­ca Monarch mo­ments, the com­pe­ti­tion had been in de­cline since the mid-2000s, strug­gling to at­tract spon­sor­ship and plagued by poor at­ten­dance af­ter sev­er­al ma­jor so­ca stars, in­clud­ing Machel Mon­tano, Bun­ji Gar­lin and Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, opt­ed out of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Al­though there were protests by some diehard so­ca fans when ISM was can­celled in 2022 due to a lack of fund­ing, by that time the event had more de­trac­tors than sup­port­ers.

Munroe stepped away from in­volve­ment in ISM, which is owned by the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF) for the Per­form­ing Arts, many years ago and for a while af­ter his de­par­ture, his suc­ces­sors were able to keep his dream and the event alive.

The fac­tors that led to the demise of ISM two years ago need to be front and cen­tre now that Tourism and Cul­ture Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has set in mo­tion plans for the com­pe­ti­tion’s re­vival.

For any chance of suc­cess, how­ev­er, it can­not be the same show. New and in­no­v­a­tive el­e­ments must be in­clud­ed to make it a star-stud­ded mar­quee event, at­tract­ing both top-flight and emerg­ing artistes.

That is the on­ly way to re­gain the sold-out crowds that will guar­an­tee ISM’s Car­ni­val Fri­day dom­i­na­tion.

Tak­ing Munroe’s vi­sion to the next lev­el re­quires the in­volve­ment of proven pro­fes­sion­als from ini­tial plan­ning to the grand fi­nale, oth­er­wise, even with sup­port from the state, the re­turn of ISM will be an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty.

A cru­cial first step will be to as­sem­ble ex­pe­ri­enced event plan­ners, mar­ket­ing and lo­gis­tics ex­perts, pro­mot­ers, in­vestors and oth­er qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als with proven track records.

Do it prop­er­ly, or not at all.