The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion may not be go­ing vir­tu­al but the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so Or­gan­i­sa­tion is plan­ning a vir­tu­al fu­ture, in­clud­ing if pos­si­ble a Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, TU­CO pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba al­so known as Broth­er Re­sis­tance stressed his or­gan­i­sa­tion was a Car­ni­val or­gan­i­sa­tion and as such their pri­or­i­ty was to push the mu­sic for­ward.

“Peo­ple want to hear mu­sic, they want to feel mu­sic, they want to be with mu­sic, and there­fore I am cer­tain and we can al­ready see over the past month or so is that the artistes have been pro­duc­ing mu­sic. Our mis­sion as an or­gan­i­sa­tion is to find ways to or­gan­ise plat­forms for the per­for­mance of this mu­sic and to present this mu­sic to the world and we are pre­pared to do so,” said Re­sis­tance.

He added, “So whether the NCC have or don’t have or don’t want to have, that cool, that is their busi­ness. But it had Car­ni­val be­fore it had the NCC any­way so that is not we prob­lem So I am say­ing for mu­sic we are go­ing to con­tin­ue to make the mu­sic and con­tin­ue to present the mu­sic to the world.”

Re­sis­tance said the TU­CO ex­ec­u­tive was still ex­plor­ing var­i­ous meth­ods and so­cial me­dia plat­forms con­cern­ing the best way for­ward.

While he con­firmed that the door was not closed on even host­ing a Ca­lyp­so Monarch, he, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that prizes would be an is­sue.

‘We have the ca­pac­i­ty to do the ca­lyp­so monarch and what­ev­er oth­er com­pe­ti­tion but the chal­lenges would be the prizes, that would be the chal­lenge. So we would have to de­cide in terms of what we do if we get pro­grammes go­ing do we find ways to take care of the greater ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers or do we em­brace the com­pe­ti­tion which will just en­sure that a few mem­bers are tak­en care of. It’s a sort of moral kind of de­ci­sion that we would have to make,” he said.

Re­sis­tance, how­ev­er, point­ed out that 2021 ac­tu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed 100 years of the Ca­lyp­so tent, at least in its cur­rent form.

Crit­i­cism of the NCC’s an­nounce­ment on Wednes­day con­tin­ued to mount with sev­er­al point­ing to oth­er vir­tu­al Car­ni­val events held across the Caribbean as well as dur­ing Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to con­tact NCC Chair­man Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.