Laverne Smith and Richard Montano have yet again been crowned the King and Queen of J’ouvert.
Before sunrise on Carnival Monday, the King and Queen of J’ouvert competition kicked off in the streets of Port of Spain, with participants blending satire, social commentary and traditional J’ouvert themes in a vibrant display of creativity.
Laverne Smith transformed into a traffic warden for the day, blowing away the audience and judges with her portrayal titled “Ah fineing he, she and everybody.”
Speaking with the media after her victory, marking a hat-trick, she explained the idea behind her theme this year.
“I’m in my 50s, and I literally started social studies last year. And what I learned is that the topics
that we do in social studies is social issues. It affects everybody. So, everybody’s getting fined.
Everybody’s complaining 19,000, 20,000. It’s something that everybody’s speaking about. It’s not
something that somebody could say they never hear before. They don’t know about it. They have to go and investigate. They know about it. So, I try to get a topic that everybody’s familiar with.”
Meanwhile, Richard Montano took the title of J’ouvert King once again, this time with his performance of U-N-SEE running D corn-tree.
“I’ve been following the politics from Florida into Trinidad. And I always come back to do something attacking or topical about the situation in Trinidad. So that’s how the idea came about. This idea came about since in November of last year.”
Both winners took home $2,500 each.