Dispute over hosting of two Junior Soca Monarch competitions this year

The producers of Barbados’ first Junior Soca Monarch Competition say they feel blindsided by a decision by the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) to host a similar event this year without notifying or consulting them about the initiative.

But NCF Chief Executive Officer Carol Roberts-Reifer made clear Monday this was simply not the case, as she explained that founder of the Junior Soca Monarch Competition, Paul Clarke had failed to provide a proposal for collaboration or sponsorship from the NCF which stood ready and willing to assist all Crop Over stakeholders.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Clarke said he was informed of the NCF’s event by two leading sponsors, and some participants had been asking about participating in that competition.

“Their [the NCF’s] argument is that for years, they have been planning to introduce junior soca into their line-up. However, we did it first, we did it in a COVID environment and we did it very well,” he declared.

“We introduced quite a few new things that could even be adopted for the Pic-o-de-Crop [competition] and a lot of other events where we had real-time judging, where five minutes after the show had ended you can have the results there and ready.

“Those were some of the innovations we brought to competitions in Barbados, and we would have hoped that the NCF could have seen that, embraced that, worked with us and built on it with us,” he added.

The competition in 2020, which Clarke said was distinct from the NCF’s social commentary-focused Junior Calypso Monarch, was made possible, in part, through the foundation’s COVID-19 relief grant. He added that the absence of financial support from the NCF this time around was a significant setback.

According to Clarke, the statutory body had intimate knowledge of his plans for the event  although there is no evidence the NCF used that knowledge to create its own competition.

“NCF representatives were actually at our competitions as well as the Minister [of Culture] at the time, who is now Senator John King. He was at the competition and he made presentations at the competition,” Clarke recalled.

The private sector event producer, who is also president of the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries, said he was therefore shocked to hear of the NCF’s Junior Soca Competition.

“Immediately, we reached out to the NCF to find out what was going on, since obviously they had supported our competition, but we were made to understand that they were doing their own competition,” said Clarke.

“We asked about ways that we could possibly look at working together, because to me it doesn’t make sense having two junior monarch competitions over the same period. They decided to go a different route, they don’t see it as a problem, they don’t see it as either competition negatively affecting the other.”

Clarke revealed that some of the leading event sponsors are now on the proverbial fence about participating.

However, when contacted, the NCF CEO made clear that while the foundation is not in the habit of sharing private and professional information when it meets with stakeholder groups, it had to clear up some inaccuracies made by Clarke.

Roberts-Reifer disclosed that on May 31, two months after the Ministry in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for Culture announced this year’s festival, Clarke requested a conversation to explore the possibility of collaborating with the NCF.

“The foundation . . . went public with the Crop Over calendar on the 22nd of March, 2022. We received a request for a conversation to look at a proposed collaboration with Mr Clarke’s soca event on the 31st of May, via email.

“When it was drawn to my attention, I instructed the music officer, Mr Kevin Moore, to have a meeting with Mr Clarke to find out what he was proposing. That meeting took place, and I gave further instructions for Mr Clarke to submit a formal proposal. To date, we have received no formal proposal,” Roberts-Reifer told Barbados TODAY.

“Obviously, if we announced it in March and it is now May going into June, we would have been proceeding with plans. So, to say that we had intimate knowledge of his plans would be incorrect,” she added.

Responding to Clarke’s point that NCF representatives were at his competition in 2020, Roberts-Reifer explained that the Foundation was a substantial sponsor and was only present at the event on invitation from the organisers.

She further contended that the NCF was in no position to offer sponsorship because there was no requests from the private sector promoter.

“The fact of the matter is, the NCF always has and continues to support all event promoters, event professionals, artistes across all disciplines and all the rest. Can we support all? No, we cannot, it is unrealistic. But we do support a tremendous amount,” Roberts-Reifer said.

“So, the notion or the implication that we would take someone’s idea and run with it or we would slight them is a bit unfortunate because that is not the NCF that currently operates and it is certainly not the NCF that has pumped millions of dollars into all of the efforts of all of our stakeholders since COVID in a very difficult economic climate and an institution that continues to do so.”

She also contended that although the NCF’s three decades-old junior competition only used the name “soca” in recent times, the genre had been included since 2013.

“I went back and I checked and our records show that even though we did not have a competition called a Junior Soca Competition, it has been for over three decades the Junior Monarch or the Junior Calypso Monarch competition. We have actually had soca in the competition from 2013,” she said.

Despite the developments, Clarke has promised to honour his commitment to the young performers by moving forward with his competition that includes emphasis on developing “world-class” soca artistes who understand “the business of music”.

Clarke, whose sold-out 2020 show was held at the Ball Park said 12 competitors had already been selected for the July 23 finale.(TD)