Sascha Wil­son

In cel­e­bra­tion of his first "icon­ic" win at the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM), Dar­ryl "Farmer Nap­py" Hen­ry plans to have a live con­cert for his fans. In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day, an elat­ed Hen­ry said all he cared about was win­ning the ti­tle.

"I just want to thank every­body. I just want­ed the ti­tle. It is not about the mon­ey," said an emo­tion­al Hen­ry.

Dubbed "The Monarch" by the ISM, the pre-record­ed com­pe­ti­tion was aired be­fore a vir­tu­al au­di­ence on Fri­day. Hen­ry out­shone the ten oth­er com­peti­tors with his hit "Back­yard Jam" to claim the first prize of $150,000. Tak­ing sec­ond place was Olatun­ji Year­wood with "Drunk His­to­ry", while third place went to Viking Ding Dong and Mi­cal Te­ja with "Horn­ing First".

The third-place duo ded­i­cat­ed part of their per­for­mance to sup­port the call for an end to vi­o­lence against women. Al­though there was no live crowd, the artistes gave en­er­getic per­for­mances with props, dancers, video pre­sen­ta­tions, and stage an­tics.

Hen­ry, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia, said, "I just want­ed the ti­tle, is the ti­tle that im­por­tant, is not about mon­ey. In this pan­dem­ic, this ti­tle is very icon­ic for every­body be­cause this pan­dem­ic is like Rain­o­ra­ma when it rained out in Jan­u­ary and the Car­ni­val was in May. This is icon­ic, so­ca monarch and road march for me. So it was very im­por­tant for me to get this, this year."

He said the vir­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion was not strange to him. "It's an ex­pe­ri­ence, it's like do­ing a video, you ba­si­cal­ly do­ing a video." While there was no crowd, he said, "At the end of the day, you still had to do what you had to do. It went down good."

Grate­ful for the pub­lic's sup­port, Hen­ry said it was time for him to have his con­cert. "I want to have some cel­e­bra­tion, some vic­to­ry, some­thing. But, I want to have it af­ter Car­ni­val and for the peo­ple, for South peo­ple, and for Trinidad. I want to say thanks very much to Navin­dra NH Pro­mo­tions with my man­age­ment for pulling this off with me."

De­spite the COVID-19 re­stric­tions he is hop­ing to have a live au­di­ence at his con­cert. "Not no vir­tu­al. You see how the pro­to­col is in NA­PA and SAPA, where you could have a quar­ter of the peo­ple and stuff, is that I want. So if the Prime Min­is­ter lifts it a lil bit and it have more peo­ple, that will be just in my zone.

"But, I have to do it for the peo­ple them. Every­body keeps ask­ing me when I do­ing my con­cert, but I feel the time is now for us to cel­e­brate this."

In a Face­book post be­fore the show was tele­vised, ISM's cre­ative di­rec­tor Si­mon Bap­tiste thanked the team and the con­tes­tants. "This mes­sage is to re­mind peo­ple who love our mu­sic, our cul­ture, and our arts, that what you will wit­ness in this two-hour tele­vised event are hu­man be­ings who will give their all to their per­for­mance. Most haven’t earned pay cheques in the last eight months be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, and yet they did what­ev­er was in their pow­er: fi­nan­cial­ly and cre­ative­ly, to present their fans and our view­ers with every­thing they could muster. Please don’t take that for grant­ed." He re­gret­ted, how­ev­er, not be­ing able to in­clude re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al artistes.