Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The de­ci­sion to can­cel the Ca­lyp­so and Ex­tem­po com­pe­ti­tions has dis­ap­point­ed artistes with­in the fra­ter­ni­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, for­mer Ca­lyp­so Monarch Du­ane O’Con­nor said the can­cel­la­tions due to a lack of fund­ing re­in­force the view that Ca­lyp­so is not get­ting the re­spect it de­serves.

“My first re­ac­tion was ‘shocked, dis­ap­point­ed, ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed,’” said O’Con­nor.

He be­lieves blame must be even­ly shared, ex­plain­ing that chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters spoke “too quick­ly” about the TT$30 mil­lion bud­get which prompt­ed pub­lic out­cry.

“These peo­ple do not be­lieve in Ca­lyp­so and that sec­tor who want to crip­ple the art form, they de­cid­ed to ques­tion the TT$30 mil­lion for Car­ni­val,” O’Con­nor said.

Of the TT$15 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for the ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’ event, TU­CO re­ceived TT$1.5 mil­lion, how­ev­er, $1.3 mil­lion will be used to run eight Ca­lyp­so tents across T&T, leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion with on­ly $200,000 to host the com­pe­ti­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to TU­CO pres­i­dent, Ains­ley King, this amount was not enough to put on the com­pe­ti­tions and pay prizes.

In fact, he said the coun­cil be­lieves a poor­ly fund­ed event could have af­fect­ed the Car­ni­val brand.

“We know what the el­e­ments of the Ca­lyp­so means to peo­ple but it would have done more dam­age at the end of the day for Ca­lyp­so if we went down that road we were forced to go down,” King said.

Over 70 peo­ple were reg­is­tered to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tions. TU­CO has since apol­o­gised to the par­tic­i­pants.

O’Con­nor said peo­ple con­tin­ue to dis­re­gard the im­pact of Ca­lyp­so on the coun­try’s cul­ture.

“We let so­ci­ety know of the ills, of the chal­lenges, the is­sues, the suc­cess­es of our na­tion­al he­roes and icons like our sports­men and sports­women so Ca­lyp­so play an ex­treme­ly in­te­gral part in our so­ci­ety,” he went on.

He de­fend­ed TU­CO against crit­i­cisms about the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s abil­i­ty to fund it­self say­ing it has been on its knees beg­ging for sup­port from the cor­po­rate sec­tor.

“There are cor­po­rate en­ti­ties and politi­cians who have shows and you know when they come to us, they beg us to per­form as favours fail­ing to un­der­stand that we have fam­i­lies to feed,” O’Con­nor said.

He added it is the same or­gan­i­sa­tions that are not will­ing to step up to the plate to help save the art form.

Mean­while, ca­lyp­son­ian Wayne “Im­pulse” Mod­este is point­ing fin­gers in an­oth­er di­rec­tion.

He be­lieves Pe­ters has lost his way as a fel­low ca­lyp­son­ian.

“We done don’t get enough and you want to call us and tell us here is 50 cents and make that work... that is a dis­re­spect. They don’t treat us with re­spect,” he com­plained.

Mod­este be­lieves more can be done for the sec­tor.

The Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta card­ed for this Sun­day at Na­pari­ma Bowl will take the form of a con­cert show­down fea­tur­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans from Trinidad and To­ba­go while TU­CO said it will par­tic­i­pate in the Di­manche Gras on Car­ni­val Sun­day which will take the form of a Ca­lyp­so Su­per Clash.

King is promis­ing changes to TU­CO which will see the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­com­ing more self-suf­fi­cient.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell about this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, how­ev­er, up to late Wednes­day he did not re­spond to ques­tions.