BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – COMMENTS made a couple of weeks ago by Carnival Chairman Noah Mills have sparked responses from one of the competitors in the Sugar Mas 44 Soca Monarch Competition.
Mills, who was at the center of complaints made by several Soca artistes, told SKNVibes that the issues which were thought existed seemed to have disappeared, seeing that the aggrieved artistes participated in the Soca Monarch Competition in one form or another.
On such artistes is K-Jah, who contacted SKNVibes upon reading the article and informed that he does not understand how Mills could make such comments especially when some of the issues that presented themselves in the lead-up to the competition are still present.
The issues, according to the artistes who went as far as holding a press conference to air their views, included Mills’ dishonesty, his propensity to bend and twist the rules to suit particular situations and his failure to properly communicate.
“The issues haven’t disappeared, the issues are still there! They are still lingering, they are still affecting persons. The issues are not being addressed; they are just being rolled over per se. As you can see, there have been lots of back lack on the issues surfacing now…”
This publication recalls that one of the conditions most of the aggrieved artistes said would have to be present in order for them to perform is that the Carnival Chairman is removed from that position.
SKNVibes questioned K-Jah about his reasons for competing when the request was not fulfilled.
“That’s what we were promised. Basically, he said that they had a meeting with the Minister and all of that. I can’t really speak for everybody, but I personally did it because of all the encouragement I got…my family, my friends, my peers. All in all, I wanted to do it and it was a great experience for me to present myself and promote my song, and I always wanted to do it. But the issues and the back and forth with the committee had us reluctant. But at the end of the day, I still wanted to do something to please my fans. So that was my main reason for doing it.”
Lingering issues
The soca artiste, who has been in that field for the past three years, said the lingering issues include failure of the Soca Monarch Sub-Committee or the Carnival Committee to release the scores from the competition.
“What is still lingering is up until now we have yet to know any scores from the Finals. So we don’t know our scores, we don’t know what our official placements are. If you call the Carnival Committee even today, all they would know is who are the Kings, but you don’t know what the other placements are. I feel what they doing is very malicious because people are calling, inquiring about the scores and stuff like that. And basically what you’re getting from them is that Grant Thorton has the scores. It is like they are passing the blame on to Grant Thorton. So we the artistes feel like Grant Thorton holding up the scores.
“Some issues that are still lingering are (concerning) the rules and criteria of the competition. That’s something that has been changed and augmented. Up until the day of the competition we were still unsure about a lot of rules. They were still bending rules or making adjustments or, as they would say, they working with the artistes or whatever. Communication was another major issue in terms of how they disseminated the information. It was just weird they would chose to answer certain things but ignore other requests…”
The Way Forward
The soca artiste says a post mortem meeting is needed if issues are to be resolved.
“We need a real Soca monarch committee, we need a real chairman, not a yes man, not someone who has no idea how a show is supposed to be run or handled or operated.
“There was a Soca Monarch Chairman who was not doing his job. Most meetings, if not all, Mr. Mills was the one cheering these meeting, which to me is micromanagement which should not be happening. When we get a real chairperson then I guess he would appoint a real committee to do whatever needs to be done. We need a post mortem meeting to basically thrash out what went wrong and plan for the Soca monarch coming.”
