Chalkdust slams TUCO, quality of songs for Dimanche Gras

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­[email protected]

Re­porter

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) is again deny­ing claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in this year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch judg­ing, but one vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian, Hol­lis “Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool, in­sists the re­al prob­lem lies with poor­ly trained judges.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s draw for or­der of ap­pear­ance in the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal at Sun­day’s Di­manche gras show, TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King dis­tanced the or­gan­i­sa­tion from such claims, not­ing that reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Helon Fran­cis won last year with what he deemed as “po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary” – ti­tled ‘To Whom it May Be.’

“Why peo­ple should think that we are try­ing to sti­fle po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary? But I un­der­stand, be­cause peo­ple are liv­ing in their head,” King said dur­ing the draw at Radis­son Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

“When peo­ple are left out, you know, the re­ac­tion is the same. You know, they get an­gry and they get dis­ap­point­ed, and they try to get the pub­lic to put pres­sure on the or­gan­i­sa­tion. And that is some­thing we ac­cus­tomed to. But the re­al­i­ty re­mains that it doesn’t make sense.”

King’s or­gan­i­sa­tion faced sim­i­lar claims af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary round judg­ing and af­ter the semi­fi­nals (Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta) at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, last Sat­ur­day.

Fol­low­ing the re­lease of the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta re­sults, pub­lic out­cry erupt­ed over the elim­i­na­tion of sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary songs in the up­com­ing fi­nals. On so­cial me­dia, many ex­pressed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the omis­sion of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Rod­er­ick “Chuck” Gor­don and De­von Seales not ad­vanc­ing to the fi­nal, with some sug­gest­ing TU­CO had been in­flu­enced by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment.

In the past few days, Gor­don and Ad­de­lon “Ban­jela” Brave­boy have re­leased their score sheets via so­cial me­dia im­ages, high­light­ing what they de­scribe as dis­crep­an­cies in scor­ing.

But King yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that the judges were in­de­pen­dent, had been se­lect­ed by a com­mit­tee and un­der­went a spe­cial train­ing process.

Asked about the pub­li­cised scores, he said he could not com­ment on the scor­ing. How­ev­er, King said the al­le­ga­tions “make no sense” and that com­pe­ti­tions like these nat­u­ral­ly at­tract “con­fus­ing and des­per­ate spir­its.”

How­ev­er, ca­lyp­so vet­er­an Liv­er­pool, record hold­er for the most Ca­lyp­so Monarch wins, yes­ter­day ac­cused TU­CO of re­cruit­ing un­qual­i­fied judges. He said judges need bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion on ca­lyp­so struc­ture and mu­si­cal­i­ty to pre­vent in­con­sis­tent re­sults and chal­lenged the ad­vance­ment of sev­er­al ca­lyp­so­ni­ans to Sun­day’s fi­nal.

“The prob­lem is not ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. The prob­lem is TU­CO. Be­cause you have no­body to train the judges. The judges need train­ing,” Liv­er­pool told Guardian Me­dia.

He added that judges can­not be trained in just two days to un­der­stand ca­lyp­so nu­ances, which is what, he said will lead to in­con­sis­tent re­sults.

With­out stat­ing any names, Liv­er­pool al­so crit­i­cised the se­lecti­no of sev­er­al semi­fi­nal­ists and fi­nal­ists, call­ing many per­for­mances “freestyles” not true ca­lyp­sos.

“The prob­lem what I heard is that 90 per cent of the peo­ple who were singing there were not singing ca­lyp­soes. That’s the prob­lem,” Liv­er­pool said.

“I of­fered my­self to train the judges years ago and they told me that that will be bi­ased. So, if I can’t train them, who could train them?”

The 2026 fi­nals will be held on Di­manche Gras night at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Or­der of ap­pear­ance

Ta’Zyah O’Con­nor – Cast Them Away

Akhen­aton Lewis [Yung Bred­da] – The Mes­sen­ger

Nicole Thomas-Clarke – Sac­ri­fice

Giselle Fras­er [GG] – No Vil­lage Can’t

Kerice Pas­call – No Con­science

Ri­val­do Lon­don – Wa­ter Thick­er

Sam­raj Jaimun­gal [Rik­ki Jai] – Doh Spoil Meh Name

Ter­ri Lyons – Bless­ings

Karene As­che – No­body Wins Un­til

Muham­mad Muwak­il [Free­town Col­lec­tive]– Ca­lyp­so

Helon Fran­cis – Doh For­get

Roslyn Reid Hayes [Roslyn] – Ca­lyp­so Call­ing Me

Re­serve: Bri­an Lon­don- De Code