So­ca star Machel Mon­tano and Guardian Me­dia’s Cas­ton Cu­pid are among 41 per­form­ers se­lect­ed to com­pete at Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, the semi­fi­nals of Ca­lyp­so Monarch.

The Feb­ru­ary 3 event host­ed by the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), will see 40 en­ter­tain­ers and one re­serve per­form­ing.

The re­sults and the or­der of per­for­mance were an­nounced dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at Kaiso House, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day.

TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King promised it would be a “clas­sic evening of en­ter­tain­ment.”

Con­firm­ing they had record­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of per­form­ers this year with 212 reg­is­ter­ing com­pared to 197 last year, King said the short Car­ni­val sea­son had been smooth thus far.

He at­trib­uted this in­crease to new ad­min­is­tra­tive and op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures and put the pub­lic on no­tice as he said the num­ber of com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets usu­al­ly giv­en out would be great­ly re­duced. He added things will not be done like be­fore.

He said this had al­lowed more reg­is­trants and to turn TU­CO in­to a prof­itable or­gan­i­sa­tion, “Things have to be done dif­fer­ent­ly.”

In an­nounc­ing the prize struc­ture for the one song for­mat com­pe­ti­tion, TU­CO gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shirlane Hen­drick­son promised, “There is some­thing for every­one.”

The Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2024 will re­ceive $500,000 in cash and a car val­ued at $300,000 as well as ve­hic­u­lar in­sur­ance.

Hen­drick­son said the or­gan­is­ers did not want the win­ner hav­ing to un­der­take that ex­pense so it had been in­clud­ed in this year’s prize of­fer­ing.

The sec­ond place win­ner will re­ceive $350,000 in cash; while the third place will be award­ed $250,000 in cash; and the fourth place will re­ceive $175,000.

Per­form­ers plac­ing be­tween fifth and 12th po­si­tions will each re­ceive $45,000 in cash.

This year’s line-up of com­peti­tors vy­ing for the ti­tle of monarch will al­so see some ca­lyp­so heavy­weights bat­tling it out at Skin­ner Park in­clud­ing for­mer mon­archs Helon Fran­cis, Ter­ri Lyons, Chuck Gor­don, and Karene As­che. The 2024 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Queen Nao­mi Sinette, Black Sage and Mi­cal “Te­ja” Williams are al­so among the com­peti­tors.