Samp­son Nan­ton

There will be no In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion this year, as its pro­mot­ers have de­cid­ed to can­cel it af­ter Gov­ern­ment re­fused their re­quest for fund­ing to the tune of $10 mil­lion.

It rep­re­sents the first time in 30 years that the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion has been vol­un­tar­i­ly can­celled.

Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion di­rec­tor Ge­of­frey Whar­ton-Lake con­firmed the de­ci­sion in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last night, say­ing it was based sole­ly on their fi­nan­cial in­abil­i­ty to host it.

“The 2023 edi­tion of the So­ca Monarch is def­i­nite­ly off,” Whar­ton-Lake said.

He said it was “not fi­nan­cial­ly sus­tain­able” based on the pri­vate and gov­ern­ment funds avail­able this year.

Whar­ton-Lake was un­will­ing to share the amount sought from Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell lat­er re­vealed the fig­ure when con­tact­ed.

“They are ef­fec­tive­ly ask­ing for $10 mil­lion to run So­ca Monarch,” he said.

“It is un­con­scionable for the Gov­ern­ment to un­der­write the full cost of an event that is pri­vate­ly owned,” Mitchell added.

Whar­ton-Lake told Guardian Me­dia the in­tend­ed first prize for the com­pe­ti­tion was $1 mil­lion and the sum of all prizes would have amount­ed to $2.5 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion, he said it would have cost be­tween $5 and $6 mil­lion to put on this year’s event.

Whar­ton-Lake said they had seen a lot of in­ter­est from artistes this year and the plan­ning had reached a stage where they were ready to “press the but­ton and go.”

How­ev­er, the show was al­so fac­ing a ma­jor com­pet­ing event this year, as so­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano, who won sev­en So­ca Monarch ti­tles—five Pow­er So­ca and two Groovy So­ca—is due to hold the Machel Mon­tano 40 One Show event on what would have been the same night of this year’s So­ca Monarch.

Mon­tano, who tra­di­tion­al­ly drew Car­ni­val’s largest crowds in his pre­vi­ous Machel Mon­day con­certs, has said One Show will be the on­ly place he will per­form for Car­ni­val 2023.

Asked what role Mon­tano’s event played in their event can­cel­la­tion, Whar­ton-Lake said, “Noth­ing, ab­solute­ly noth­ing.”

He said his team will sit down af­ter Car­ni­val to de­ter­mine the way for­ward, in­clud­ing whether to re­sume com­pe­ti­tion in 2024.

From his per­spec­tive, Min­is­ter Mitchell in­sist­ed to Guardian Me­dia that Gov­ern­ment could not fund the full sum the or­gan­is­ers were seek­ing to host what re­mains a pri­vate event.

He said Gov­ern­ment had first cho­sen to let the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) sup­port the show.

“This year, the board of the NCC took a de­ci­sion to of­fer $800,000. They too found it un­con­scionable that a pri­vate en­ti­ty should be ful­ly fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

He not­ed that in 2020, Gov­ern­ment helped fund the So­ca Monarch to the tune of $5 mil­lion, as well as of­fer prize mon­ey, the venue and in­fra­struc­ture. How­ev­er, he ar­gued that with oth­er pri­or­i­ties such as the pro­vi­sion of wa­ter and paving of roads, Gov­ern­ment had to cut down on the amount they could of­fer this year.

Yet, he said, apart from the NCC’s as­sis­tance, Gov­ern­ment was still pre­pared to of­fer $3 mil­lion to­wards the show and pro­vide the pro­mot­ers with a venue, which he not­ed would have amount­ed to rough­ly an­oth­er $2.5 mil­lion.

He said he was dis­ap­point­ed to hear views that the can­cel­la­tion was sole­ly due to Gov­ern­ment’s “fail­ure to sup­port the cul­ture.”

“I have al­ways in­di­cat­ed that I sup­port the cul­ture. The Gov­ern­ment sup­ports the cul­ture. I be­lieve in so­ca. I would make a call for pro­mot­ers and peo­ple host­ing events next year to con­tin­ue to pro­ceed to do so,” he said.

Mitchell agreed the So­ca Monarch was a “sta­ple” in Car­ni­val, yet not­ed, “but you will agree that it has been dy­ing.”

He said over the last few years, oth­er pro­mot­ers saw that the show was be­com­ing less im­por­tant to fans and had start­ed putting on pri­vate shows on the same night of the once-mega event.

He said giv­en the show has served to de­vel­op and give a plat­form to up­com­ing so­ca artistes, the NCC is now con­sid­er­ing host­ing a sim­i­lar so­ca com­pe­ti­tion next year, but would like­ly have to call it by an­oth­er name.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, but he opt­ed not to com­ment on the top­ic be­fore hear­ing the min­is­ter’s views.

He did say, how­ev­er, that the NCC does not have mon­ey to ful­ly fund ma­jor events but could lend some as­sis­tance.

The So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion be­gan in 1993 with Austin ‘Su­perblue’ (for­mer­ly Blue Boy) Lyons win­ning with Bac­cha­nal Time.

It con­tin­ued an­nu­al­ly un­til 2021, when Dar­ryl ‘Farmer Nap­py’ Hen­ry won with Back­Yard Jam in a show sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced due to the re­stric­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

There was no show last year dur­ing the mi­ni cel­e­bra­tions known as the Taste of Car­ni­val.

While the event had tra­di­tion­al­ly catered for ‘Pow­er So­ca’ songs, it was split in 2005 to in­clude a ‘Groovy So­ca’ cat­e­go­ry.

Both Mon­tano and Su­perblue share the most wins—sev­en each—one of which was shared be­tween them in 2013, when Mon­tano per­formed Float and Su­perblue sang Fan­tas­tic Fri­day.

Aaron ‘Voice’ St Louis is the next most suc­cess­ful So­ca Monarch artiste, with six wins, which in­clud­ed three Pow­er So­ca ti­tles and three Groovy So­ca crowns.