PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

As it stands now, there will be no In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch for the 2024 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters yes­ter­day con­firmed that the event, which had been a fix­ture among Car­ni­val events and com­pe­ti­tions for the past three decades, was again in lim­bo due to a lack of fund­ing.

The event is owned by the Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF) for the Per­form­ing Arts but was can­celled last year due to a lack of fund­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Pe­ters said nei­ther the CPF nor the NCC, which had been seek­ing to as­sist with he project for this year, had been suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing the nec­es­sary funds re­quired to stage the com­pe­ti­tion.

“The pri­vate en­ti­ty would nor­mal­ly do it, we help fa­cil­i­tate it. But the fund­ing is not there right this minute. We are still try­ing to come up with it to see if it could hap­pen,” Pe­ters said in a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia had pre­vi­ous­ly reached out to CPF chair­man Ge­of­frey Whar­ton Lake, who ini­tial­ly in­di­cat­ed that he would have an an­swer con­cern­ing the event by last Fri­day. When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Whar­ton-Lake ad­mit­ted he still had no an­swer on if So­ca Monarch could hap­pen.

A stake­hold­er close to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, who asked not to be named, re­vealed that giv­en the lack of fund­ing and the lim­it­ed time left in the sea­son, it was near im­pos­si­ble for a show of the cal­i­bre of So­ca Monarch to be held. Car­ni­val Fri­day is 24 days away.

The stake­hold­er said this was dis­heart­en­ing, as sev­er­al artistes, par­tic­u­lar­ly younger ones hop­ing to make their names in the busi­ness, had reached out to the CPF ask­ing if it would take place. The artistes, the stake­hold­er said, felt that with­out the com­pe­ti­tion, they were de­nied a route to build their brands fur­ther. The stake­hold­er ar­gued that giv­en so­ca’s im­por­tance to Car­ni­val, there should be greater in­vest­ment by the state akin to that seen to re­vive Panora­ma.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said the Gov­ern­ment had giv­en the NCC an al­lo­ca­tion to over­see events for Car­ni­val, but stressed that So­ca Monarch had been tra­di­tion­al­ly a pri­vate event.

“That is an in­de­pen­dent, pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion. They usu­al­ly do their So­ca Monarch. NCC has sup­port­ed that pri­vate event. Last year they had asked for an ex­or­bi­tant amount of mon­ey, $10 mil­lion, which was un­sus­tain­able,” Mitchell in a phone in­ter­view.

“That would have amount­ed to the Gov­ern­ment to­tal­ly un­der­writ­ing the event and that sim­ply was un­sus­tain­able. The NCC was asked to look for an al­ter­na­tive for this year’s fes­ti­val,” the min­is­ter added.

The In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch was last held vir­tu­al­ly in 2021 dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, with Farmer Nap­py win­ning the ti­tle with his hit Back­yard Jam.

The last pub­licly staged So­ca Monarch was held in 2020, with Iw­er George and Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller win­ning the Pow­er So­ca crown with Stage Gone Bad while Col­lege Boy Jesse won the Groovy So­ca Monarch with The Hap­py Song.

How­ev­er, the event, which since 1992 had been a mar­quee in the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar dubbed Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, saw low in­ter­est from pa­trons fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion of sev­er­al ma­jor so­ca stars, in­clud­ing Machel Mon­tano, Bun­ji Gar­lin and Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, to opt out of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The ini­tial drop in at­ten­dance could be traced as far back as the mid-2000s, af­ter Gar­lin ini­tial­ly opt­ed not to re­turn to the com­pe­ti­tion in 2007, be­fore be­ing con­vinced to take to the stage in 2008.

It saw a resur­gence in 2011 when Mon­tano was coaxed to re­turn af­ter a 15-year ab­sence, with sev­er­al oth­er artistes do­ing the same fol­low­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of a $2 mil­lion first prize in the Pow­er cat­e­go­ry and a $500,000 prize for the Groovy Monarch.