Helon Fran­cis wrote his way to this year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle with a heart­felt let­ter to the coun­try’s next Prime Min­is­ter, whomev­er it may be.

While on­ly time will tell if Fran­cis’ plea on be­half of con­cerned cit­i­zens would be heed­ed by prospec­tive can­di­dates in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion and the even­tu­al win­ner, it was well re­ceived by the judges on the night, who re­spond­ed by award­ing him his sec­ond crown, a $700,000 cash prize and a KGM Tor­res SUV, val­ued at $300,000.

The judges served a sound de­feat on de­fend­ing monarch Machel Mon­tano, who placed fifth while seek­ing to add to his joint vic­to­ry in the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day night.  

They al­so de­liv­ered up­sets for crowd favourites Akhen­aton “Yung Bred­da” Lewis and An­tho­ny “Squeezy Rankin” La Fleur, who placed third and 10th in the com­pe­ti­tion much to the sur­prise of pa­trons at the Grand Stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and those fol­low­ing on tele­vi­sion and on­line, ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Kurt Allen al­so known as “The Last Bard­john of Ca­lyp­so”, who was not on many fans’ radar for a top spot af­ter a frosty re­cep­tion from the tough pan­el of ca­lyp­so afi­ciona­dos in at­ten­dance at the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta semi­fi­nal, two weeks ago, placed sec­ond. 

Speak­ing with me­dia af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced al­most two hours past mid­night on Mon­day morn­ing, Fran­cis de­scribed his feel­ings, on win­ning with To Whom It May Be to cop his first crown since 2018, as sur­re­al. 

“This time, it is even sweet­er,” Fran­cis said. 

Fran­cis, who has been serv­ing as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor since 2023, said he drew on his ex­pe­ri­ence of com­pet­ing in five pre­vi­ous fi­nals. 

“Ex­pe­ri­ence is the great­est teacher...I un­der­stand the ground well and I have per­fect­ed my own style of writ­ing and my own style of mu­sic,” Fran­cis said. 

“I went in with the same in­ten­tion I usu­al­ly have and this time I was vic­to­ri­ous,” he added. 

He claimed that go­ing in­to the fi­nal he was un­con­cerned by the hype around oth­er per­form­ers and fo­cused on his own his own pre­sen­ta­tion. 

“I am al­ways con­fi­dent be­cause I write my own mu­sic and al­ways form it for the peo­ple,” he said.

“I was try­ing to be my­self, try­ing to give the peo­ple knowl­edge of things our coun­try may be miss­ing for us to have a bet­ter fu­ture,” he added. 

He dis­missed any crit­i­cism of his non-par­ti­san ap­proach in his po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary To Whom It May Be. Fran­cis said, “I would not call it safe.”

“I am in the Sen­ate as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor so I would al­ways take the ap­proach from a bal­anced per­spec­tive, most of the time at least,” he said. 

“I would have my views on the is­land and I would try to put them in the best way pos­si­ble in song. Things that the na­tion would need to know in this pe­ri­od, in this part of his­to­ry,” he added. 

Fran­cis steered clear of en­ter­ing the de­bate over the par­tic­i­pa­tion of crossover artistes such as Mon­tano and Lewis in the tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion. 

Stat­ing diplo­mat­i­cal­ly that the ca­lyp­so art­form is in a state of evo­lu­tion, Fran­cis said: “I think what we knew as tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so is evolv­ing and many ver­sions of it can come out now. It is just what the peo­ple ac­cept.”

He al­so de­nied that his role in Par­lia­ment gave him an edge over his com­peti­tors, who he ad­mit­ted pro­vid­ed strong com­pe­ti­tion. 

“I am do­ing the same things that all the oth­er artistes are do­ing. Liv­ing their lives, be­ing cre­ative, func­tion­ing in so­ci­ety the best way we could and be­ing ac­tivists...I just won tonight,” he said. 

Per­form­ing a po­si­tion num­ber nine, Fran­cis ex­hib­it­ed a typ­i­cal­ly strong per­for­mance. 

Us­ing rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal props, Fran­cis, who was dressed in a crisp white suit, de­scend­ed a flight of stairs be­fore walk­ing to a desk to metic­u­lous­ly de­liv­er the words of his cor­re­spon­dence to the fu­ture leader of the coun­try. 

“Greet­ings to you Prime Min­is­ter, this let­ter is just for you. My in­ten­tion was to give you this let­ter when elec­tion was through but since Dr Row­ley was step­ping down, I fig­ured I could not wait. I read­ing it now, be­fore its too late,” he sang. 

“I hear peo­ple say the PNM wast­ing the na­tion’s time. I hear peo­ple say the UNC go scrape every last dime. And some could not choose be­tween bad and worse, so I had to write this plea for the next leader of this coun­try.”

“We need a na­tion full of suc­cess. A leader ad­dict­ed to progress. Some­one who is not here for the mon­ey and al­ways giv­ing us trans­paren­cy. A leader with a clear des­ti­na­tion and di­rec­tion, that is what we want to see, most re­spect­ful­ly, to whom it may be,” he sang. 

How the com­pe­ti­tion un­fold­ed

Allen was less veiled in his in­ten­tions with Your Turn Now, which sought to ad­vise Row­ley that he is de­serv­ing of crit­i­cism of his tenure with his pend­ing re­tire­ment af­ter two con­sec­u­tive terms in of­fice. 

Dressed in a colour­ful flo­ral suit, Allen was joined on stage by a troupe of plac­ard-hold­ing ex­tras dressed as pier­rot grenades and Mid­night Rob­bers. While Allen’s crafty cri­tique earned him rolls of toi­let pa­per from the no­to­ri­ous­ly un­for­giv­ing au­di­ence in the semi­fi­nals, his im­proved per­for­mance be­fore the judges and more de­mure fi­nals au­di­ence earned him the $500,000-sec­ond prize.  

Lewis singing pa­tri­ot­ic We Rise de­liv­ered what was de­scribed by some as one of the most pow­er­ful and soul­ful per­for­mances in his first for­ay in­to the com­pe­ti­tion to cap off his high­ly suc­cess­ful break­out Car­ni­val sea­son. 

His vo­cal cords were not worse for wear de­spite a hec­tic sea­son which saw him head­line al­most every ma­jor fete, but he failed to utilise the full eight-minute win­dow af­ford­ed to ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in the com­pe­ti­tion. 

He man­aged to draw the loud­est cheer from the large au­di­ence even be­fore he took to the stage in an African-themed suit and de­liv­ered his now icon­ic catch­phrase “What are you do­ing?” to punc­tu­ate his lyrics. 

The an­nounce­ment of the judges’ re­sults drew the ire of his fans, who booed and jeered. 

Clear­ly en­am­oured by the sup­port he re­ceived from fans in the run up to the com­pe­ti­tion and on the night, Lewis cut a dis­ap­point­ed fig­ure on the side­lines of the stage as he was on hand to wit­ness Fran­cis col­lect the top prize. He still walked away with the $350,000 third-place prize. 

Per­form­ing a the mid­point of the com­pe­ti­tion, Mon­tano sought to stake a claim at suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing his maid­en Ca­lyp­so Monarch crown with a casi­no and gameshow-themed pre­sen­ta­tion Bet Meh.

How­ev­er, his gam­ble, of re­ly­ing on his tra­di­tion­al high-en­er­gy per­for­mance cou­pled with well-chore­o­graphed dancers, elab­o­rate stage props and spe­cial ef­fects which saw him dressed as a race­horse jock­ey and be­ing hoist­ed above the stage dur­ing his per­for­mance,  did not pay off. 

While he was un­lucky to have suf­fered the dis­tor­tion of his back­ground mu­sic from the live band, his com­po­si­tion, though pop­u­lar on the air­waves and in fetes, was un­de­ni­ably not com­pa­ra­ble in terms of lyri­cal depth to those that even­tu­al­ly emerged ahead of the 10-time Road March win­ner, who will now seek to match Lord Kitch­en­er’s record 11 vic­to­ries in that com­pe­ti­tion. 

Lyrics ac­count for al­most one-third of the pos­si­ble points that could be award­ed, with the judges’ cri­te­ria be­ing de­vel­op­ment and depth of idea, struc­ture, nar­ra­tive, and co­her­ence. Com­peti­tors can on­ly hope to re­ceive a max­i­mum of 10 points for stage pres­ence and per­for­mance. 

While his loy­al fans were left dis­ap­point­ed by his plac­ing, the crowd at the event, who stayed well af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion end­ed, were clear­ly pleased as they emit­ted a cho­rus of rau­cous laugh­ter as it was be­ing an­nounced.  

Le Fleur’s low plac­ing was a sur­prise to many con­sid­er­ing his strong de­liv­ery of his song Jus­tice, which earned him this year’s Young King ti­tle. 

His song, which ad­vised moth­ers to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their chil­dren who are crim­i­nals af­ter they die, struck a chord with ca­lyp­so fans as much like Lewis, he re­ceived a long stand­ing ova­tion af­ter his per­for­mance. 

Ac­cord­ing to the judges, he was nar­row­ly beat­en by nine-time Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Sam­raj “Rik­ki Jai” Jaimun­gal, who en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion with Kaiso Chut­ney to reaf­firm his ver­sa­til­i­ty in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try. 

2025 Ca­lyp­so Monarch Re­sults

1. Helon Fran­cis - To Whom It May Be 

2. Kurt “The Last Bard­john of Ca­lyp­so” Allen - Your Turn Now

3. Akhen­aton “Yung Brud­da” Lewis - We Rise

4. Karene As­che - A Leader

5.  Machel Mon­tano - Bet Meh

6. Rod­er­ick “Chuck” Gor­don - Look Tuh Press

7. Du­ane Ta’zyah O’Con­nor - Kaiso To D World

8. Ter­ri Lyons - Ask Yuh Man

9. Rik­ki Jai - Kaiso Chut­ney

10. An­tho­ny “Squeezy Rankin” Le Fleur - Jus­tice

11. Roslyn “Roslyn” Reid-Haynes - Sing it in Kaiso

12. Ann Marie “Twig­gy” Parks-Ko­jo - 65 and Still Rel­e­vant