GT&T hosts spectacular Jingle and Song Finale

Jun 17, 2013 News

Ryan Hoppie bringing the house down

Local talent is certainly in abundance as telephone giant, Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T), along with this year’s finalists in the Jingle and Song competition pulled off one of, if not the best finale Guyana has ever seen.
It is definitely going to be a tough challenge for voters to decide which two contestants would soon be driving their brand new Toyota Raum motor cars.
The much anticipated finals kicked off with a superb Bollywood segment at around 16:00hrs on Friday.
As the curtains raised, last year’s Guyana (Bollywood) Star, Gail Ann Singh took to stage in a beautiful blue and white ‘lehenga’ and did a soothing rendition of Sonu Nigam’s and Shreya Ghoshal’s ‘Chori Kiya Re Jiya’ from the movie Dabangg. This was followed by an entertaining classical dance from Kenrick Cheeks.
The performers were all given a few minutes to display their vocal range by singing pieces of three songs which would include at least one Chutney song.
The actual competition kicked off splendidly with Reshma Persaud and ended similarly with Bunty Singh.
All of the 10 performers in this segment did well, and surpassed the expectations of the judging panel.
However, the most captivating performances came from the ‘all rounded” Andy Rambharack; “vocal power house” Bibi Halima Khan; Devchandra Ramrattan and Denishwar Bisessar, who were all described as having the complete package including excellent voice control and showmanship.
Many are of the opinion that had the event been better promoted and advertised, the audience turnout would have been significant.
The other contestants in this segment included Erick Sukrah, Yeataindra Singh, and Haresh Singh. Sasenarine Hitnarayan was a no show and forfeited his chance of winning the competition.
Nonetheless, shortly after an obviously successful and highly competitive Bollywood segment, majority of the seats in the National Culture Centre was taken up as persons anxiously awaited the start of the English segment.
This part of the competition kicked off with a performance by the reigning Guyana Star (in the English segment) Brandon Harding, and continued with a performance from Calvin Burnette from the Heatwave Band.
The first competitor to take the microphone was T’Shanna Cort, the Essequibian who definitely brought her ‘A’ game with Kelly Clarkson’s ‘A moment like this’.

Diana Chapman

The competition ended with Dorian Obermuller who did ‘I am titanium-fire away’.
One of the major highlights in this segment was definitely Lerone Souvenir who “rocked the house” with his version of the 1980 Bob Marley hit “Could you be loved.”
His was definitely an energetic piece that set a competitive tone.
The contestants who followed his soaring performance include the youngest of the 20 finalists, Michael Small, whose storyline on crime and domestic violence captivated the audience and contestant E18 Natasha Yhap, who brought Diana Ross’s signature song ‘I will survive’ back to life.
This continued with Diana Chapman, whose massive rendition of Tina Turner’s ‘Roll it’ had judge, Charmaine Blackman-Alves defending her title as the local Ms. Turner; it was most obvious that she is up for a stiff competition with Chapman.
While most of the performances in this segment received much in praises from the judges, as well as good crowd appeal, none could compare to Ryan Hoppie with his unique version of Chris Brown’s “Crawl”.
His piece definitely had it all. Clad in a sexy white suit, Hoppie brought the house down with his remarkable dance moves which were ably accentuated with an enchanting storyline of ‘crawling back to love’.
The other contestants in this segment were Lemuel Chester, Edward Perez and Melanie’s Darren Benjamin who delivered a performance that came in for much criticism.
The audience of both segments was cracking up with jokes from the massively entertaining stand-up comedian, ‘Radica’. Many even thought that she should have been given both motorcars for her performance.