Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

So­ca artiste Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, wife of Bun­ji Gar­lin, has de­clared that the Viking and Viqueen duo will no longer par­tic­i­pate in lo­cal Car­ni­val-re­lat­ed com­pe­ti­tions.

The an­nounce­ment came in a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, in which Lyons ques­tioned what she deemed as pre­ma­ture com­ments made by Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) judge Saman­tha Richards on the Road March race in San Fer­nan­do.

Richards was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) yes­ter­day, when she stat­ed that Mon­tano was lead­ing the Road March com­pe­ti­tion with his Pardy, fol­lowed by Gar­lin’s Car­ry It.

Richards said, “Machel is in the lead right now. Bun­ji Gar­lin right be­hind him. We look­ing for­ward to wrap­ping up and de­liv­er­ing that great news to you all as to who would be the Road March cham­pi­on this year but thus far, it look­ing like is Machel.”

She added: “I al­so got news from some­one that’s Port-of-Spain side that he’s al­so up (ahead) there. So, the peo­ple seem to be lov­ing the Pardy.”

Fol­low­ing these com­ments, Lyons took to In­sta­gram to ex­press her frus­tra­tion. While she did not di­rect­ly ref­er­ence Richards or her state­ments, she made it clear that she and her hus­band no longer wished to be part of com­pe­ti­tions.

In a video, she said, “In light of what we’ve just seen on Be­y­on­cé and Elon Musk’s In­ter­net, we have de­cid­ed that the com­pe­ti­tion sec­tor is no longer some­thing that’s at­trac­tive to us. The in­tegri­ty, the way things are be­ing done, the peo­ple that they are putting to do the things that they have to do is very un­com­fort­able and un­set­tling to us. So, in light of that we have de­cid­ed to step away and I do hope that you all do bet­ter, cause y’all have younger artistes com­ing up and if y’all re­al­ly care about cul­ture, then the man­ner in which you present the cul­ture mov­ing for­ward should be of the ut­most im­por­tance, and dis­ci­pline is a big part of it, as well as trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, hon­esty and most im­por­tant in­tegri­ty which seems to be in a deficit right now.”

So­ca artistes are re­quired to reg­is­ter their songs with TU­CO to be con­sid­ered for Road March and oth­er com­pe­ti­tion cat­e­gories.

How­ev­er, Lyons-Al­varez re­as­sured fans that this is not the end for them mu­si­cal­ly and urged those in charge to im­prove the com­pe­ti­tion process.

“To all the fans that sup­port­ed Car­ry It and to all the fans that sup­port­ed Road Meet­ing (Ly­on-Al­varez’s’ song), we thank you guys very much. We will con­tin­ue to be de­liv­er­ing and do­ing mu­sic but at the same time we ask that the pow­ers that be fix it. You have younger artistes that would love the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing in these com­pe­ti­tions and if this is what y’all pre­sent­ing to them... they’re not stu­pid.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Richards and her col­league, who was seen along­side her in the video tak­en out­side SAPA, were both re­lieved of their judg­ing du­ties af­ter their in­ter­view was shared on­line.

Mean­while, Lyons-Al­varez al­so shared the video of that in­ter­view with a cap­tion ques­tion­ing the judges’ pro­fes­sion­al­ism: “Are these JUDGES?? … If soooo Ok … what lev­el of mad­ness is this?? I’ve been around this com­pe­ti­tion for yearsssssss … nev­er have I heard or seen judges dis­cussing re­sults pre­ma­ture­ly! And to fur­ther state you’re get­ting in­fo from oth­er places and putting it in the pub­lic do­main be­fore a prop­er au­dit or tal­ly is done is the lev­el of “off” that makes you won­der if we re­al­ly in a sim­u­la­tion. You telling me Alyuh on Elon musk in­ter­net like we can’t see Alyuh giv­ing opin­ions and in­sights to re­sults …. And you ex­pect US to trust the process!!! Look Alyuh make sense nah!!! Ash­ton Kutch­er yuh could jump out now … This have to be a prank!”

Con­tact­ed last evening TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King de­clined to com­ment on the is­sue. How­ev­er, sources with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion said the ad­ju­di­ca­tion man­age­ment com­mit­tee was con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.