sto­ries by Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

It was the out­come many so­ca lovers pre­dict­ed, as Mi­cal Williams— bet­ter known as Mi­cal Te­ja—shot past the com­pe­ti­tion in tak­ing the 2024 Road March ti­tle with his smash 2024 Car­ni­val hit DNA.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the VIP Lounge in the Pad­dock of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King an­nounced that DNA was played a to­tal of 341 times be­tween Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

Last year’s Road March win­ner Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez fell to a dis­tant sec­ond place with Car­ni­val Con­tract be­ing played 225 times and Patrice Roberts’ Anx­i­ety was third af­ter be­ing played 48 times.

The Bel­mont-born Williams took to so­cial me­dia af­ter the an­nounce­ment and thanked the fans for their sup­port and en­cour­aged oth­er young peo­ple to pur­sue their dreams.

“These wins aren’t about me, these wins are for every young per­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go with a pas­sion.

“Please, please, please fol­low your pas­sion and do it with love.”

Gar­lin al­so post­ed on Twit­ter short­ly af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced and thanked his fans for their sup­port and con­grat­u­lat­ed Te­ja on his first Road March win.

“Thanks to all that loved Car­ni­val Con­tract from day one and those af­ter. Let us al­so con­grat­u­late Mi­cal Te­ja on his Road March win and ti­tle and con­tin­ued bless­ings and love on this jour­ney through so­ca.”

The mu­sic video for DNA, which was post­ed to YouTube late last year, has amassed 2.8 mil­lion views.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um’s So­cadrome on Car­ni­val Tues­day, Te­ja, who al­so won the Young King ti­tle this year, said he want­ed to write a song that em­bod­ied the spir­it and at­ti­tudes of T&T and it’s peo­ple.

“It’s a cel­e­bra­to­ry type en­er­gy, there are so much dif­fer­ent things just com­ing in and I think that in it­self al­so de­scribes our DNA, it’s mixed up with all dif­fer­ent things,” he said.

“Hap­pi­ness, we re­al­ly fiery, we love a pi­cong and I want­ed to cap­ture that as best as I can in one song.”

Te­ja, who has al­so earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a song­writer for artistes like De­stra Gar­cia, Wadicks and Farmer Nap­py, said the tran­si­tion from writ­ing songs to per­form­ing them was not dif­fi­cult, re­fer­ring to it as an­oth­er form of ex­pres­sion.

“It’s a form of ex­press­ing my­self and ex­press­ing things I see in my en­vi­ron­ment. Be­ing an artiste is just a dif­fer­ent form of ex­press­ing that.”

At a sep­a­rate me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, the T&T Car­ni­val Bands’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) an­nounced that the Lost Tribe won the Band of the Year ti­tle for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, earn­ing 858 points with their por­tray­al of Fly.

Ron­nie and Caro slipped to sec­ond place with their por­tray­al of Bush­fire: The Ris­ing of New Life, pick­ing up 848 points, while Pa­parazzi came third with Ihoko: The For­got­ten Trail, earn­ing 811 points.

In the Medi­um Bands cat­e­go­ry, Ki­net­ic Mas earned the top spot with their por­tray­al of Yokos (894 points), while K2K Al­liance and Part­ners’s The Salt Cross­ing was next with 876 points and Im­age Na­tion in third was with Jou­vay (761 points).