CDC Unveils New Regulations for Party Monarch Competition

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Carnival

Tuesday, 26 June 2012 02:30

By caribarena news

Antigua St John's - With revised rules, regulations, and prize system as well as the introduction of a penalty system for this year’s proceedings, the 2012 Party Monarch competition is officially underway.

The changes were unveiled on Monday at a CDC organized judges meeting for participants of this year’s event at the Antigua Recreation Ground. Scores of known and upcoming performers gathered to hear about the revised rules and regulations and the criteria for this year’s Competition as well the venues for the eliminations and semi-finals.

Changes to the rules include a revised measuring system for the Jumpy Party Monarch, which will now be determined by songs measuring between 80-124 beats per minute (bpm). This was changed from 130-165.

This change has received some level of contention as some artists contended that it does not conform to international norms of 90-135 and provides for a boring show. Other changes allow for performers to have three additional musicians and a sample programmer to compliment his performance.

“I don't know why they are dropping down the tempo. When we drop down the tempo we actually make the first round boring because it is just too slow,” one performer said.

These concerns will be brought to the next Carnival Development Committee board meeting for review. What is new, however, is the penalty system for semi-finals and finals. According to this system, contestants will be given a grace period of 10 seconds outside of their allotted performance time, and should they exceed this grace period will have one point deducted from their overall score every ten seconds or part thereof that is exceeded. A statistician and a stopwatch will manage this system.

The penalty system will be imposed at each CDC spearheaded event for the year, including the anticipated Teen Splash competition that was launched over the weekend, as well as the Queen Show and other events.“It is in keeping throughout the Carnival shows,” one CDC official said.

Monday’s meeting also sought to regularize the information about each artiste and facilitated the submission of demo CDs to the National Festivals Office for the elimination purposes. Registration coordinator Keith Yearwood said it was too early to determine how many will register for this year’s competition, but a notable number of new registrants have been recorded.

Furthermore, the prize money system has been revised with descending values for winners 1-5 and the latter five runners up receiving the same figures. This will apply to both Groovy and Jumpy Monarch competitions. In previous years, the same prize moneys were handed down to artistes attaining the positions from 3rd runner up.

“The last five will get the same. But up until 5th place the prize moneys will vary. The last five wont get any trophy or even be called on stage but the money will be reflected,” said a CDC representative.

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