An­dre McEach­nie

Machel Mon­tano has al­ways been a very in­tel­li­gent and ex­treme­ly tal­ent­ed per­former. Some promi­nent peo­ple,how­ev­er, have ex­pressed great dis­ap­point­ment in his in­abil­i­ty to move this mu­sic to an­oth­er lev­el. They have cit­ed the lyri­cal con­tent of the ma­jor­i­ty of his songs and the ob­ses­sion with treat­ing fe­males on­ly as sex ob­jects. They in­sist that he has "the Mi­das touch" and any­thing he sings usu­al­ly be­comes a hit. This abil­i­ty is not ful­ly ex­plored when the fo­cus of the artiste ap­pears to be pro­duc­ing mu­sic ex­clu­sive­ly for the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Trinidad and the Caribbean di­as­po­ra. Cel­e­bra­tion songs are im­por­tant to Car­ni­val be­cause they dri­ve the en­ter­tain­ment as­pects of the fes­ti­val in the fetes and play­ing mas on the road.

Most of the so­ca artistes and lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers gen­er­ate a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their an­nu­al in­come dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

Machel has per­formed a few "love songs" and some "mes­sage songs," which were equal­ly suc­cess­ful. Ed­dy Grant once re­marked that one of the ma­jor hin­drances to so­ca gain­ing wider in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal was the dearth of songs deal­ing with man/woman re­la­tion­ships in the con­text of love. He em­pha­sised there was a need for more love songs in this mu­sic. This writer has en­joyed per­for­mances of Machel at shows in New York, and wit­nessed the tremen­dous con­trol he has over his au­di­ence and the dis­com­fort this pow­er had on the New York law of­fi­cers. Over the years this anx­i­ety of the po­lice might have been re­spon­si­ble for some of the par­ties he played be­ing closed off ear­li­er than orig­i­nal­ly ad­ver­tised.

A young rel­a­tive has al­so seen Machel in full flight at one of the up­scale clubs in Man­hat­tan and Madi­son Square, and she con­tin­u­ous­ly men­tioned his lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in putting on a mag­nif­i­cent in­ter­na­tion­al show. When Machel ap­peared at the Ca­lyp­so Di­a­logues at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies about five years ago, he did so with an acoustic gui­tar and he in­di­cat­ed he was try­ing to learn this in­stru­ment be­cause he want­ed to put more melodies in­to his songs.

Since then, he has pro­duced some songs with in­ter­est­ing melodies but he con­tin­ues to re­ly on the rhythm of the mu­sic. Is the to­tal re­liance of rhythm ap­pro­pri­ate for the mar­ket­ing of so­ca mu­sic to a di­verse in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence? There is a per­cep­tion that large record­ing do not sign Trinida­di­an so­ca artistes be­cause their rep­re­sen­ta­tives usu­al­ly con­clude that lo­cal artistes "can­not sing." This de­scrip­tion is not ap­plic­a­ble to Machel be­cause in his ear­ly years he sang a num­ber of bal­lads to var­i­ous au­di­ences.

It is a fact that most so­ca artistes utilise main­ly rhythm and a stac­ca­to ap­proach in pre­sent­ing their songs, there­by re­duc­ing the use of melodies but pro­duc­ing a hyp­not­ic ef­fect on peo­ple en­joy­ing the mu­sic. So­ca songs with in­ter­est­ing melodies and var­ied lyri­cal con­tent can help to erad­i­cate the myth of "the can't-sing Trinida­di­an so­ca per­form­ers." Machel, con­grat­u­la­tions on tak­ing this crit­i­cal de­ci­sion (not to per­form to a T&T au­di­ence this Car­ni­val) which shows that you are a man of great courage and self be­lief.

Every­one knows that this res­o­lu­tion comes with tremen­dous per­son­al and fi­nan­cial sac­ri­fices, since per­form­ing to a Trinida­di­an au­di­ence is utopia to some artistes and you usu­al­ly gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial in­come dur­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Trinidad. Many of your friends, fans, mas­quer­aders and even your de­trac­tors are go­ing to miss your en­er­getic live per­for­mances. You now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on your po­si­tion in the mu­si­cal land­scape of Trinidad and be­yond.

You must view your­self and your mu­sic as be­ing more than just Car­ni­val with its re­stric­tive lyrics and in­struc­tion­al songs. The world must be your stage. Con­sid­er your­self as "Some­times go­ing to for­eign lands, where they have nev­er heard a ca­lyp­son­ian" (Shaba­ka�So­ca Tak­ing Over) Great re­li­gions of the world have al­ways em­braced re­flec­tion and sac­ri­fices as es­sen­tial tenets of their doc­trines. You must ac­cept your po­si­tion of mes­sen­ger and leader in spread­ing "the Gospel of So­ca." Your philo­soph­i­cal re­view should in­form your de­vel­op­ment of var­i­ous strate­gies to pro­duce, per­form and mar­ket qual­i­ty mu­sic both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. You are qual­i­fied to lead the mu­si­cal brigade, as Rud­der al­ways men­tions that you are dif­fer­ent from many of the oth­er so­ca artistes be­cause you know the his­to­ry, the tra­di­tions and the pow­er of ca­lyp­so mu­sic. Best of luck in the fu­ture.

An­dre McEach­nie,

Car­ni­val Stud­ies BA (Hons),

Car­ni­val Re­searcher