The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Calypsonians Association (SVGCA) is developing a mentorship program for junior calypsonians.
This was disclosed by the President of SVGCA, Earl “Cabba” Bennett, as he discussed the importance of nurturing the youth in calypso to ensure the artform’s existence in the distant future.
“You have to appreciate, if you don’t nurture your juniors, there will be no succession plan. So we have to lay a lot of emphasis on the juniors. We tried it in the past and we’re going to do it again because people like Patches and all these calypsonians up here are very passionate about junior calypso as well.
And we are going to develop a mentorship program where, simply put, we get seasoned calypsonians with junior calypsonians because we don’t want to have 40 junior calypsonians and when they leave school we only have two or three of them coming through.” He said.
The Calypsonians Association’s President applauded local calypso tents for their inclusion, this year, of junior calypsonians in their casts for the 2024 Carnival season.
