Chester Sam­bra­no

A record num­ber of en­tries have been re­ceived for the 2023 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion.

Com­pe­ti­tion or­gan­is­er, Southex, said yes­ter­day that reg­is­tra­tion closed on Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 8) and close to 80 peo­ple had reg­is­tered new songs for the com­pe­ti­tion, “which is the largest num­ber in more than six years.”

Southex said more than 10 per cent of the reg­is­tra­tions had been from artistes com­ing from the USA and Cana­da.

It said a screen­ing process will be held to­day, af­ter which 25 songs will be se­lect­ed for the se­mi-fi­nal round, which is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 27 at Scream­ers at South Haven, Debe.

Southex ex­plained that from the se­mi-fi­nal round, on­ly 10 songs will be se­lect­ed for the grand fi­nal, which is sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 4 at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do.

Gi Be­har­ry is the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on af­ter lift­ing last year’s ti­tle with his hit “Wa We GO Do.”

Southex ex­pressed the hope that it would be able to get the prize struc­ture back to pre-COVID lev­els. It said it is hop­ing to of­fer close to $1 mil­lion in prize mon­ey, with a first prize of $500,000, sec­ond prize of $100,000 and a third prize of $75,000, with $35,000 for all oth­er fi­nal­ists.

Ac­cord­ing to Southex, “This will be the biggest prize of­fer­ing for this com­pe­ti­tion in more than three years.

“Our 2023 event will fea­ture the top en­ter­tain­ers from the Caribbean in a spe­cial fea­ture, ‘Leg­ends and Icons’, where six spe­cial artistes from the Caribbean re­gion will be ho­n­oured.”

It said the seg­ment will al­so fea­ture per­for­mances from some of the icons of the In­do-Caribbean mu­sic in­dus­try.

Southex said the com­pe­ti­tion will crown its 2023 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and the 2023 Queen of Chut­ney So­ca and will in­clude con­tes­tants from T&T, USA, Cana­da, Suri­name, Guyana, the UK and Hol­land.

“The 2023 edi­tion of the an­nu­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch will be the biggest pro­duc­tion ever un­der­tak­en over the 28-year his­to­ry of the event since 1996,” Southex said.

The 2023 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch is spon­sored by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, TSTT, Sangeet 106 FM, TTT, Blue Wa­ters and Paria Suites Ho­tel & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.