ISSUE 1/MAY 2014
34
So the North Stands are on the way down, most of the vendors are back to their regular hustle, pan and calypso judges back to their government jobs, the smell of Royal Castle chicken frying around the savannah is no more, yet the debates, quarrels, arguments continue in schools, on work, in bars, pubs you name it, about how they thief your favorite band or soca artiste or calypsoian.
But being part of this so called fraternity, having formally studied music up to a tertiary level and even now continuing to further my studies in things that surround music and carnival, I feel compelled to shed some light on the rubric used to arrive at a winner. It was very interesting to me after having several discussions with persons competing in panorama, soca monarch, and calypso monarch, to find that most, if not all of them, did not know what or how they were being judged.
Let me from the onset state that while there is a rubric which all judges must follow you cannot omit the fact that we are dealing with human beings who have likes and preferences which will affect their decisions either consciously or otherwise. For example Skiffle Bunch used a piece of an East Indian song called “Kal Ho Naa Ho” if I am judge number three in panorama finals who never heard that song could I effectively understand what the arranger did or attempted to do? Example number two, suppose I am familiar with the song, and this piece of music is to be used at funerals only and the arranger not being aware of this used it in a song about a wedding what mark should I give him? The fact is the environment in which you grow and the music or songs you listen too will shape your musical taste buds.
So Yuh Tink Dey Tief ?
by Terrence Sealey