Caribbean Beat — 25th Anniversary Edition — March/April 2017 (#144)

When a dancing Machel Montano fronted the May/June 1997 Caribbean Beat — his first of
four cover appearances — he was just twenty-two years old, but already more than a decade
into a musical career that would soon see him dominate the soca genre and Trinidad and
Tobago’s Carnival. It’s no exaggeration to describe the past two decades of T&T music as the
Age of Machel. Laura Dowrich explains why:
25 • Trinidad soca legend
Machel Montano
May/June 1997
Photo courtesy Delicious Vinyl
Every year, a week before masqueraders
take to the streets of Trinidad for the reign
of the Merry Monarch, thousands pack into
Port of Spain’s Hasely Crawford Stadium for
the biggest show in Carnival. The show is
Machel Monday. The star: Machel Montano,
five-time Soca Monarch, eight-time Road
March champ, and the indisputable king of
soca.
Others have given themselves that title,
based on their mainstream success, but none
can boast a thirty-five-year career in the art
form, practically the same number of albums,
or a brand that dominates the Carnival scene
— whether or not they are even present.
Montano entered the calypso arena as
a child, but came of age in 1997, with the
game-changing release of his Heavy Duty
album. The album and its debut single “Big
Truck” catapulted the “Too Young to Soca”
singer into the role of Carnival’s winerboy.
The lithe young man with a waist like
butter has now evolved into a sage fortytwo-year-old
That was the first year he appeared in
Caribbean Beat, where writer Pat Ganase
noted that the twenty-two-year-old was
notorious for every kind of “wine.”
Montano doesn’t wine that much these
days. The lithe young man with a waist like
butter has now evolved into a sage forty-twoyear-old
who posts inspirational quotes daily
on Instagram. But he still churns out hits to
make people dance, think, celebrate, and
debate.
The key to Montano’s longevity and
success has been his ability to change,
adapt, and push the limits of his genre,
while keeping his eye on his oft-repeated
mission to make soca popular and take it to
the four corners of the earth. He’s pursued
this relentlessly, pushing boundaries, taking
risks, and setting trends. He was the first to
collaborate with Jamaican dancehall singers,
opening the door for them to become staples
on the soca scene. He was the first to marry
house music with soca on 1995’s “Come
Dig It”, later opening the floodgates to EDM
soca with “AoA”. He sought international
collaborations, teaming up with the likes of
Pitbull, rappers Lil John and Wyclef Jean,
among others, R&B group Boyz II Men,
and South African group Ladysmith Black
Mambazo, to name just a few.
He’s taken the music far: to Egypt, India,
and South Africa, filming videos, meeting
songwriters and producers, and looking for
sounds to infuse with his. In 2007, he became
the first soca artist to headline his own show
at Madison Square Garden in New York, and
he’s performed on stages at Radio City Music
Hall, Coachella, and South by Southwest.
To maintain his position atop the pack,
Montano — now an elder in the music
arena with his thirty-five years’ experience
— surrounds himself with young talent:
songwriters, producers, musicians, and
singers who help to keep his sound fresh
and trendy.
But nowhere has his evolution been
reflected more clearly than in his changing
handles. In the early days, his band was
known as Pranasonic, named after the
Prana Lands area in Siparia, south Trinidad,
where Montano grew up. That changed to
Xtatik. Then, as he changed the way his band
functioned, he assumed the HD persona
to reflect his mission to transmit a clearer
image of who he is and what he’s about.
In 2014, HD made way for Monk Monte.
MONK, he said, was an acronym for the
Movement of New Knowledge.
With the new name came a new role,
that of actor. Montano starred in his own
film, Bazodee, a Bollywood-style love story
set in T&T. In 2016, Bazodee became the
first T&T-made film to be distributed in
the US, Canada, and across the Caribbean.
He’s expected to follow that up in 2017 with
a documentary called Machel Montano:
The Journey of a Soca King. That journey is
far from over. For the foreseeable future,
Montano’s crown seems secure.
46 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM