One-song blues

 THE ONE-SONG FORMAT for the premier Crop Over competition, Pic-O-De-Crop, is not sitting well with some calypsonians.

Veterans Serenader and Colin Spencer said yesterday the genre would suffer in the long-term; while four-time monarchKid Site said while he had no major issue with the new format, he would have preferred a semi-final rather than a straight slot for 16 into the finals against the reigning king.

In announcing changes to the festival for 2019, the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) cited cost-cutting measures as part of the reasons. They included combining the Sweet Soca and Party Monarch into a new Soca Monarch final, the removal of the semi-final leg from the Pic-O-De-Crop, and the one song on finals night

Chief executive officer Carol Roberts-Reifer, during a sponsors’ reception at Ilaro Court in March, revealed that last year fewer than 900 people attended the semifinals and under 4 000 were at the finals. “We decided when we began to look at the festival that we needed to do two things: tighten the cost . . . [and] bring the sparkle back to the Pic-O-De-Crop, what was the jewel in the crown of Crop Over past . . . . One song means one presentation, one set of backups and one of everything else,” she said then.

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