AJALA - Sonanny - CHUTNEY SOCA MONARCH COMPETITION - ttt (1996)

Chutney soca's rise in popularity through the mid to late 1990s was expedited by its changing role in Trinidad's Carnival celebration. The 1995–96 Carnival season saw the establishment of the Chutney Soca Monarch Competition and the performance of a number of chutney soca songs during the calypso soca competition by creole musicians, including Marcia Miranda, Tony Ricardo, Chris Garcia, Brother Marvin, Luta and Ajala. Embraced as it was by non-Indian performers, who abandoned formal Indianisms, sang solely in English and emphasized the soca beat, chutney soca became a national fad.The Chutney Soca Monarch competition has become the largest and most important Indo-Caribbean concert of its kind in the world. Today its production costs more than US$1 million annually. It has crowned many champions from 1996 to 2010 which include Sonny Mann, Rikki Jai, Heeralal Rampartap, Rooplal Girdharie, and Ravi Bissambhar. Since the late 1990s, chutney soca has spawned the similar styles of chutney rap, chutney jhumar and chutney lambada, dance music whose Indo-Caribbean themes are mixed with Bombay film music and American popular music