Calypsonian Ronnie De Announcer Clarke is calling for a review of the judging system used in the Pic O De Crop (PODC) competition.
In an interview with Weekend Buzz following the media launch of the Crop Over Festival where the return of the Party Monarch and Sweet Soca Monarch competitions and Cohobblopot were announced, which he is happy about, the outspoken artiste said judging is the one step he would like “to see improve”.
“The judging at the preliminary stage includes seven judges with natural scores, out of 100 for each judge, and all scores count. When you get to the finals, it’s ranking points and five scores count, two scores don’t count so, the high and low is applied, seemingly at the Finals, but not at the preliminaries and I think that’s an imbalance.
“Donella suffered heavily from that last year, but she was about 30 points ahead coming into preliminaries. Personally, I think she should have been at least third in the competition last year when I had a chance to look back, because you can’t evaluate the competition on the night of competition. You have to go back and look at it. I thought she was outstanding, and she didn’t deserve sixth [place]. I think that these changes in the judging system hurt her, nothing more than that,” said Clarke, who placed third in last year’s competition with his song the National Carol Festival.
He would also “like the names of the judges to be matched with the point for calypsonian,” reasoning that “the judges are performing too”.
“I can’t hide and be announced on stage. The musicians can’t hide. The vocalists can’t hide; the dancers can’t hide. So why should the judges hide? In boxing and ice skating, all of their scores are revealed. I’m not saying [disclose this information] at the time of the performances’ conclusion. I’m saying ultimately, that these scores are printed with the judges assigned to the scores that they gave. And if you’ve got four categories, the bigger print out, which maybe can go to the tent managers to discuss with the calypsonians, would include this score by judge for calypsonian by category. In this competition, it’s only for one song, so it’s not two songs being judged,” Clarke said, using the results of the 2018 PODC contest as an example.
He contends with the ranking system, there “shouldn’t be having tied scores” explaining “you can tie break by comparing the categories which are the heaviest, from 40 to 30 to 20 to ten until you get a tie break.”
“There’s a bit more thought that needs to go into the judging,” he added.
Clarke said he prefers the judging system using the raw scores, which was much fairer in his opinion “because a judge might score high and a judge might score low” which allowed for a median point.
“You need to go back to the highest out, lowest out, in terms of natural scores out of 100, not ranking points, because that gives more opportunity for persons who may be not winning on everybody’s card a chance to win because they’re more consistent. That’s the fairest system, much fairer,” he said.
On the matter of Foreday Mornin’ Jam which starts in the wee hours during the last lap weekend and was debated in public recently, he stated that the National Cultural Foundation’s (NCF) organised event “should be the only one held on that day, at that time”.
He added, “If you want to have another one, have it on another day. I ain’t got no problem with that, but not on the same day as the NCF event. It devalues the NCF Foreday Mornin’ and they work very hard to put that on.
“People got this argument about bougie jumps versus ghetto jumps – that’s what they mean without saying it – but the NCF’s Foreday Mornin’ jump up is for Bajans, for people who come to Barbados to be a part of the national festival. The other events are not national. They’re being held in a national festival. They’re taking away from the spectacle of the national event and that should never happen,” Clarke told Weekend Buzz. (GBM)
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