KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Lornette “Fya Empress” Nedd won the National Calypso competition Sunday in her first attempt at the genre after 14 years of singing soca and has promised “bigger, better things next year”.
The artiste, who also won the Queen of Calypso crown in her second home –Trinidad — this year is confident that she and her team has figured out the Vincentian judges.
“We know what we are working with here now. I have been here since 2007 back and forth so I know, I am gradually learning what their standard of calypso would be, how they would like it to portray on stage and I am sure that next year it will be better,” she told I-Witness News shortly after being crowned.
“I am ecstatic. I am happy,” the artiste who placed second in the Soca Monarch competition Saturday night told I-Witness News.
“I had a great team working with me. I cannot finish thanking them for all their hard work,” said Fya, whose “I Am Woman”, a song written by Tobagonian Prince Unique, also make her calypso queen in Trinidad earlier this year.
(Listen to Fya’s winning rendition of “I Am Woman”)
“I didn’t do much in this,” she said of her victory. “I had just to go on stage and put forward the songs. So I am grateful. I had a very good backing team.”
Fya also thanked her fans and “everybody who had faith in me.
“Thanks to my women for coming out and supporting this season,” she said.
Her second song, “Ah True Vincy”, an up-tempo composition, praised “St. Vincent, my home, land of my birth” but was more of a tribute to Vincy Mas, the nation’s premier festival even as it lauded the nation’s culinary and other cultures.
“I sat and I thought ‘What could I do to contribute to St. Vincent? What sort of song is going to put across for people to understand what is in St. Vincent?’” she said of the composition of the song.
“And the only person who had done that for me was this guy [Alston “Becket” Cyrus] that had done ‘St. Vincent my homeland you gave me no mansion.’ And I thought since then nothing was done… Come on. We needed something to represent St. Vincent and that’s where that theme came from,” Fya further told I-Witness News.
(Listen to Fya’s winning rendition of “Ah True Vincy”)
And while she was content with her Soca Monarch second place and congratulated Gamal “Skinny Fabulous” Doyle on his fourth soca crown, Fya warned that she would be no push over next year.
“I know he is going to have to work a little harder next year. Like I said, every year, we try to make a step up from where we were last year and this year, wow, I am very happy.”
Fya beat Fitzroy “Brother Ebony” Joseph, into second place in the calypso competition although he made one of his best attempt at the crown with his widely popular and cleverly written “Nothing At All” and the less popular “Ladder to Success”
Third place went to seasoned contender Bridgette “Joy-C” Creese, a former national calypso monarch and queen of calypso who sang “Under His Thumb” and “Implementation a Must”.
(Click for photos of the entire show)
(Watch highlights of Calypso Finals below)