King: ‘Calypso is alive, thriving and well’

JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

Pres­i­dent of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), Ains­ley King, says ca­lyp­so is not on­ly alive but soar­ing, de­clar­ing that the art­form is firm­ly in good hands as it con­tin­ues to en­joy re­newed en­er­gy and pub­lic sup­port.

King made the re­marks on Sun­day dur­ing the an­nounce­ment of the 40 se­mi-fi­nal­ists for the Se­nior Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion and the 15 fi­nal­ists for the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch.

Ac­cord­ing to King, the pres­ence of ca­lyp­so is be­ing strong­ly felt across the coun­try, both on the air­waves and on the stages.

“Ca­lyp­so is present. We are hear­ing ca­lyp­so get­ting a lot of air­play. Ca­lyp­so is al­so very present be­cause ca­lyp­so is all over at this time,” he said.

He al­so point­ed to in­creased at­ten­dance at ca­lyp­so events as a clear sign of the genre’s resur­gence, not­ing that pub­lic in­ter­est con­tin­ues to grow with each pass­ing sea­son.

“There was a time when we were hear­ing peo­ple say­ing that ca­lyp­so is a dy­ing art­form. To­day, I don’t be­lieve that say­ing that will be a cor­rect state­ment,” King added.

He said TU­CO has al­so ob­served a grow­ing in­ter­est from artistes out­side the tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so space, with per­form­ers from oth­er mu­si­cal gen­res in­creas­ing­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with­in ca­lyp­so tents.

“We are see­ing in­ter­est of artistes from dif­fer­ent gen­res and an in­crease where artistes are com­ing to work with us in the tent. So it’s clear where ca­lyp­so is con­cerned, in 2026, we can de­clare ca­lyp­so is back, ca­lyp­so is alive,” King stat­ed.

Mean­while, King al­so an­nounced the prize struc­ture for this year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, high­light­ing TU­CO’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to re­ward­ing ex­cel­lence in the art­form.

The first-place win­ner will re­ceive one mil­lion TT dol­lars, while sec­ond prize stands at five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars. Third place will earn three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars, fourth prize two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars, and fifth prize one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-five thou­sand dol­lars.

King fur­ther not­ed that com­peti­tors plac­ing be­tween sixth and twelfth po­si­tions will each re­ceive forty-five thou­sand dol­lars.

Among the 40 se­mi-fi­nal­ists hop­ing to de­throne reign­ing monarch Helon Fran­cis are for­mer ti­tle hold­ers Du­annne O' Con­nor, Ter­ri Lyons as well as Karen As­che and Hearther Mac In­tosh.