For decades, thou­sands of peo­ple would pack their cool­ers with drinks and their bas­kets with soup, pelau or sand­wich­es and make their way down to Skin­ner Park for hours of ‘kaiso, kaiso’.

While Skin­ner Park is fa­mous for the sport­ing he­roes it has pro­duced, many high­ly re­gard it as a mu­si­cal col­i­se­um for the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta com­pe­ti­tion, which serves as the semi­fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion.

But with San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi turn­ing the sod for the re­de­vel­op­ment of the park last Sep­tem­ber, Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta now moves to a new lo­ca­tion—Guaracara Park, Pointe-a-Pierre.

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Broth­er Re­sis­tance) has promised the show will be not on­ly the same but with a new look.

He said TU­CO’s op­er­a­tions team had al­ready viewed the ground, lo­cat­ed just out­side the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and hadap­proved its use.

Masim­ba said there was a lot of space, park­ing and the venue was not dif­fi­cult to find.

The car park of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um was al­so con­sid­ered as a venue, but by the time TU­CO looked in­to it, an­oth­er event was booked for the Feb­ru­ary 15 show date. 

“There is the amount of space we need to es­tab­lish the venue for it to be the biggest ca­lyp­so pic­nic in the world. When we are fin­ished prepar­ing the venue, we will cre­ate an at­mos­phere that will al­low peo­ple to en­joy them­selves. When peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence this Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, we would stake our claim to be there for a num­ber of years to come.”

Masim­ba added, “It will be the same Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta but with a 2020 vi­sion. We will be mak­ing sure that it will be on point and the ca­lyp­so monarch com­pe­ti­tion will still be the most pres­ti­gious ti­tle in the en­ter­tain­ment world where Car­ni­val is con­cerned. Since 1939 to now, it has been a show that has car­ried a lot of in­tegri­ty and when we do this, we do it re­spon­si­bly in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic.”

De­spite the sen­ti­men­tal re­la­tion­ship be­tween Skin­ner Park and Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, TU­CO recog­nised that a new lo­ca­tion was need­ed be­cause of the works at the Park.

How­ev­er, im­por­tant for TU­CO was that the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta show re­mains in South Trinidad where it was cre­at­ed and nur­tured.

Masim­ba said prepa­ra­tion for the ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion is un­der­way and TU­CO is ex­pect­ed to meet with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion this week to plan for the venues.

The pre­lim­i­nary round of the com­pe­ti­tion kicks off in two weeks with judg­ing at the tents.

There will be three ses­sions for those ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who are not at­tached to a tent on Jan­u­ary 18, 19 and 20 at Palms Club, San Fer­nan­do and Kaiso House, Port-of-Spain.

Some fif­teen se­mi-fi­nal­ists will be se­lect­ed from the Ca­lyp­so Fi­est com­pe­ti­tion this year, to get their chance at de­thron­ing the 2019 Ca­lyp­so Monarch Re­nal­do Lon­don.