Carnival Winners 2025
Who are this year's Monarchs and who did manage to win Road March?
As spring tries its hardest to escape out of the harsh winter cold here in Wales, much of my attention this week has been 4,000 miles towards the sunshine, in the twin Caribbean islands of Trinidad & Tobago.
As I mentioned in my last Newsletter, for me the Caribbean carnivals are not just colourful street parties that I dream about constantly. They’re expressions of freedom and liberation, resilience, community and culture. They are one of the greatest celebrations of life itself, but also they are a web of intense competitions that hold a similar place in my heart and mind as football does for most people here in the UK. I’ve been keeping up with this year’s results and I want to share the highlights with you, in the hope that one day you’ll share my enthusiasm. Forget about the Cup final, grab a few beers and come watch the Calypso Monarch final with me instead. Speaking of which…
The opening of this year’s Dimanche Gras, when the Calypso Monarch is crowned, was a huge production filled with dancers in sparkling space suits and featuring musical performances from Freetown Collective, Nailah Blackman with Skinny Fabulous and Voice, who opted to sing one of his hits from last year, ‘Penthouse’ - which is unusual because soca tends to be seen in very seasonal terms. Everything is focussed around the big hits of the day and this could be a push back against that way of thinking. After all, Voice's songs certainly stand the test of time.
I won’t take you through all 11 finalists, but the top 3 are certainly noteworthy. In third place was Yung Bredda with his song ‘We Rise’, a powerful rallying cry for people to join together and pull the island out of “darkness”. It’s a far cry from the slackness filled “steam” tracks that he made his name with. Steam is a form of dancehall that, despite their similarities, Yung Bredda sees as separate to ‘trinibad’ or it’s more party orientated offshoot ‘zess’ - the controversial two sounds and cultures that sprung up in Trinidad & Tobago after Vybz Kartel led Jamaican dancehall in a new direction during the late 2000s.
Kurt Allen was in second place with ‘Your Turn Now’, a more overtly political call to action aimed at the current Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, although it was also directed at whoever might be stepping into the leader’s position after the elections later this year.
The winner was another political message aimed at the future Prime Minister. Entitled ‘To Whom It May Be’ it was sung by Helon Francis, an independent senator in the Parliament of Trinidad & Tobago. Perhaps it’s not too late for George Galloway to enter Eurovision next year - and whilst I wouldn’t put it past him, I apologise wholeheartedly for putting that image in your heads. Here’s Helon Francis with his winning song to help you erase it.
The defending champion Machel Montano only made it to fifth place with his track ‘Bet Meh’. A decent enough tune but definitely not as worthy as last year’s winning composition. I’m guessing he’s happy to have added the title to his large collection of accolades last year, so put his focus back into the soca arena. That said he did collect another new title this year as he became the Soca Chutney King after entering that competition for the first time with the track ‘Pepper Vine’, which features Chutney legend Drupatie Ramgoonai and rising star Lady Lava, who has had a great season this year thanks in no small part to her song ‘Ring Finger’ which was released back in the summer. I also have to mention the producers of the track, DJ Private Ryan and my good friends Jus Now. The question is did Machel Montano also win the Road March this year? You’ll have to wait til the end to find out.
Yung Bredda also popped up again in the Ultimate Soca Champion competition, which sprang up to replace the Soca Monarch contest in its absence. Although his zess influenced soca hit ‘The Greatest Bend Over’ won on text votes and made him the People’s Champion, the judges favoured Blaka Dan and his track ‘Blessing’, which is certainly one of my favourites at the moment.
Third place was taken by Preedy, who also became the Freestyle Monarch for this year after a Calypso contest where the entrants have to improvise lyrics about a subject chosen at random. This takes place at the same time as the Extempo contest, a decades old tradition of improvised verbal duelling, which far predates rap battles. This year’s Monarch was Black Sage, who last won the title 21 years ago. He beat Brian London in the final, and whilst the skills are undeniable the subject matter was mostly calling each other's sexuality into question, which I’m really over to be honest.
There have been tons of big tunes released for Carnival this year. I have three Spotify playlists if you’d like to check out some of the main releases, along with a few personal favourites. In case you didn’t know, there are many different sub-genres of soca but the main two styles you’ll find in Trinidad & Tobago Carnival are the fast and hard ‘power soca’ or the smoother ‘groovy soca’. The Road March is almost exclusively a power soca tune, although last year’s winner ‘DNA’ was a notable exception. One good way to find out what the biggest groovy tracks of the year are is to check out the steel band competition Panorama, where this year the most chosen tunes to cover were ‘Cocoa Tea’ by Kes and Voice’s ‘Too Own Way’ both huge hits at the moment.
Here’s the winners of the Large Bands title Exodus with their version of ‘Too Own Way’.
Last year’s joint winners Renegades opted for Machel’s ‘Bet Meh’ which got them second place, and in third was Skiffle with another Voice tune ‘Retro’. Meanwhile, the Medium Band winners chose an older tune, Mighty Sparrow’s classic ‘Lying Excuses’. It was the third win in a row for Katzenjammers Steel Orchestra.
So now to the big one, for me at least. This year’s Road March winner is Machel Montano with ‘Pardy,’ which makes a total of 11 wins over the years. This ties him with Lord Kitchener as the artist with the most Road Marches of all time. It’s a great song and well deserved, although the win was not without some controversy.
‘Pardy’ was played a total of 267 times at the judging points, followed by my personal favourite, Bunji Garlin ‘Carry It’ at 257. A close race for sure, but questions were raised when one of the tabulators charged with counting the plays was filmed earlier in the day announcing that Machel was to be the winner. She was eventually fired by the governing body, TUCO (Trinbago Unified Calypsonians' Organisation) but the damage was done and Bunji Garlin’s wife Fay-Ann Lyons called foal on social media and said,
“The integrity, the way things are being done, the people they are putting to do the things that they have to do is very uncomfortable and unsettling to us. So in light of that, we have decided to step away (from “the competition sector”), and we hope that you all do better, because ya’ll have younger artists coming up and if you all really care about culture, then the manner in which you present the culture moving forward should be of the utmost importance.”
Fay-Ann is also the daughter of Superblue who has the second highest number of Road March wins, as well as being an incredible artist in her own right with 3 Road Marches under her belt between 2003 and 2009. This would have been Bunji’s third win, including the hit ‘Famalay’ with Machel, although for me he’s never been an artist that had to rely on such accolades. He seems to play by his own rules and that’s one of the reasons we love him.
Between the 1950s and 1970s most of the Road Marches were divided between Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow, however my favourite artist of the time was Shadow, who only had one win in this period, and another many years later in 2001. Bunji Garlin is the modern day Shadow and he’s all the better for that in my opinion. I guarantee that ‘Carry It’ will have a longer life than ‘Pardy’ and it’s still an incredible achievement having the second most played song at Carnival, oh and the third most played also, as after both of those was his track ‘Thousand’ with 22 plays.
Perhaps it was simply the heat of the moment, but I feel like we are at a junction. If Bunji Garlin really does step away from the Road March race, will Machel Montano slow down now that he is in the number one slot, or will he want to have that position by himself, beating Kitchener. There are many other great artists who are overdue Road Marches, Patrice Roberts hasn’t had one since her Machel collaboration in 2006. Both Voice and Kes have come close but never quite got there (Edit: Oops I forgot about ‘Stage Gone Bad’ the collaboration between Kes and Iwer George in 2020), and now there’s new artists such as Yung Bredda who certainly has a ‘Road March’ in him. I’m planning to be back in Port of Spain for next year’s Carnival, so hopefully I’ll find out from the frontline next time.
There are plenty of other Caribbean carnivals, Vincy Mas over in St Vincent & The Grenadines, Crop Over in Barbados and Spicemas in Grenada are some of the ones I will be keeping an eye on. Although they will all provide their own big tunes, the hits from Trinidad & Tobago’s will continue their life at most of them. We will certainly hear plenty of them at Notting Hill Carnival this year. If you’ve been to any carnivals already this year or are planning to go, then I’d love to hear about it. The tabanca is very real for me right now though.