Young performers shine at More Than Just Talent finals

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Amalya Burke and Cordell Hinds have emerged as the top per­form­ers in their re­spec­tive age groups at the 11th edi­tion of the More Than Just Tal­ent (MTJT) com­pe­ti­tion, which show­cased the singing, danc­ing and in­stru­men­tal skills of young per­form­ers at the Na­pari­ma Bowl in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day.

Burke won the sev­en-to-12 age group, while Hinds took first place in the 13-to-19 cat­e­go­ry, as 24 con­tes­tants com­pet­ed in the grand fi­nals un­der the theme “Be­yond the Spot­light, Be the Rea­son”.

Burke al­so won Best Dancer, while Sa­narii An­drews placed sec­ond and was named Best Vo­cal­ist. Thalia Cae­sar placed third and re­ceived the Most Im­proved award.

In the old­er age group, Hinds al­so won Best In­stru­men­tal­ist and Best Lo­cal In­stru­men­tal Piece. Is­hana Edgar placed sec­ond and was named Best Dancer, while Jay­da George of To­ba­go placed sec­ond and won Best Vo­cal­ist.

George was the first con­tes­tant from To­ba­go to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Asia Tidd placed third, won Best Lo­cal Song and was named Most Im­proved, while Imani Archie re­ceived the Best Lo­cal Dance Piece award.

The re­sults re­flect­ed the range of tal­ent on dis­play, with con­tes­tants per­form­ing across sev­er­al gen­res and dis­ci­plines.

For pro­gramme di­rec­tor and pro­duc­er Roy Gomez, this year's fi­nals were among the most dif­fi­cult to judge since the com­pe­ti­tion be­gan in 2014, with the stan­dard of per­for­mances mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the win­ners.

“The tal­ent on the whole, es­pe­cial­ly in the younger group, is much more di­verse, in terms of all the con­tes­tants are ba­si­cal­ly on the same page,” Gomez told Guardian Me­dia.

He said the com­pul­so­ry lo­cal cat­e­go­ry in the old­er age group of­ten proved de­ci­sive, re­quir­ing con­tes­tants to step out­side their com­fort zones and demon­strate their abil­i­ty to per­form Trinidad and To­ba­go's mu­sic.

Gomez in­tro­duced the cat­e­go­ry in 2022, dur­ing the coun­try's 60th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions, and de­cid­ed to re­tain it af­ter see­ing the in­ter­est it gen­er­at­ed.

He said some con­tes­tants had nev­er per­formed ca­lyp­so be­fore, mak­ing the cat­e­go­ry an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to ex­plore lo­cal mu­sic and de­vel­op a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the coun­try's cul­tur­al her­itage.

For Gomez, how­ev­er, the val­ue of the com­pe­ti­tion ex­tends be­yond tro­phies and prize mon­ey.

He said the pro­gramme pro­vides young peo­ple with a plat­form to dis­cov­er their abil­i­ties, over­come their fears and de­vel­op the con­fi­dence to per­form be­fore an au­di­ence.

“A lot of times, it's more fear than a lack of abil­i­ty,” he said, en­cour­ag­ing par­ents to give their chil­dren op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore their tal­ents.

“Giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, I'm sure that the stage is a way for them to start. And once they get com­fort­able, they grow and grow and de­vel­op.”

The im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing young per­form­ers with op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op their craft was al­so high­light­ed by TU­CO vice-pres­i­dent and South Cen­tral chair­man Ras Kom­man­da.

He wel­comed the plat­form the com­pe­ti­tion pro­vid­ed for young artists to de­vel­op their stage­craft, but said he hoped pro­mot­ers would place greater em­pha­sis on lo­cal gen­res, in­clud­ing ca­lyp­so, chut­ney and chut­ney so­ca.

Kom­man­da said young peo­ple need­ed greater sup­port from schools, cor­po­rate spon­sors and lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs to de­vel­op their artis­tic abil­i­ties.

He al­so called for arts and cul­ture to re­ceive greater at­ten­tion in the school cur­ricu­lum, not­ing that the cre­ative in­dus­tries could con­tribute to the coun­try's fu­ture de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to di­ver­si­fy be­yond oil and gas.

For the young con­tes­tants, the ex­pe­ri­ence of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op their skills, ex­press them­selves and build con­fi­dence.

Anaya Boodram, a Form One stu­dent of Na­pari­ma Girls High School, said per­form­ing had helped her over­come her shy­ness and be­come more com­fort­able ex­press­ing her­self.

“I'm re­al­ly proud of my­self be­cause with­out this, I don't think I would have ever been this brave. I would have been such a shy child, even go­ing in­to Form One,” she said.

She al­so de­scribed singing as an emo­tion­al out­let, ex­plain­ing that it helped her cope when she felt sad or over­whelmed by school­work.

An­oth­er young per­former, Sophia Dass, said she used dance to ex­plore a dif­fi­cult sub­ject through her con­tem­po­rary piece, “When Home Isn't Home”.

She said the per­for­mance rep­re­sent­ed chil­dren liv­ing in homes where there was no peace be­cause their par­ents were con­stant­ly fight­ing.

Dass, who was per­form­ing a so­lo for the first time in a com­pe­ti­tion, said the ex­pe­ri­ence was not just about win­ning but al­so about mak­ing con­nec­tions and us­ing dance to high­light ex­pe­ri­ences faced by peo­ple around her.

She said she hoped the piece would shed light on the strug­gles of chil­dren liv­ing in such cir­cum­stances.

Con­tes­tants who qual­i­fied for the se­mi-fi­nal and grand-fi­nal rounds are el­i­gi­ble for se­lec­tion to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the 29th World Cham­pi­onship of Per­form­ing Arts, sched­uled to take place in Las Ve­gas, Neva­da, from Ju­ly 11 to 20.