It has been 38 years since Machel Mon­tano first com­pet­ed at Di­manche Gras and as was the case back then, his par­tic­i­pa­tion at­tract­ed con­sid­er­able in­ter­est and de­bate.

Since that mem­o­rable de­but in the Big Yard, Mon­tano has evolved from a pre­co­cious nine-year-old pri­ma­ry school pupil to this coun­try’s most suc­cess­ful so­ca artiste.

On Car­ni­val Sun­day night, on a dif­fer­ent stage from the so­ca are­na he has dom­i­nat­ed with an un­prece­dent­ed sev­en So­ca Monarch and ten Road March ti­tles, he made his mark in the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion.

In the finest tra­di­tions of the art form, Mon­tano sang his own com­po­si­tion, Soul of Ca­lyp­so, and trans­lat­ed his decades of ex­pe­ri­ence on the so­ca stage to claim the crown at Di­manche Gras and be­come the first per­son to win the Young Kings, Road March, So­ca Monarch, and Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tles.

Add that to the count­less awards, chart-top­ping songs and mu­si­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions over his 42 years as an artiste.

For most of his years in the spot­light, Mon­tano has been syn­ony­mous with so­ca but has nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to that genre, as he has demon­strat­ed time and again through his col­lab­o­ra­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al artistes such as Pit­bull, Ma­jor Laz­er, Wyclef Jean, Ashan­ti and the leg­endary Hugh Masakela.

He has al­so worked with lead­ing AfroBeat stars and, clos­er to home, teamed up with an im­pres­sive list of lo­cal and re­gion­al stars on record­ings and per­for­mances.

Machel Mon­day, his sold-out pre-Car­ni­val con­certs, were plat­forms for many of these al­liances.

But with all those mu­si­cal pair­ings, his mis­sion has al­ways been to gain main­stream recog­ni­tion for the mu­sic of his birth­place.

That quest con­tin­ues with his cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suit, a mas­ter’s de­gree in Car­ni­val Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

As the 2024 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch, com­bin­ing his roles as an artiste and an aca­d­e­m­ic, Mon­tano is now in a strong po­si­tion to break down the mu­si­cal bar­ri­ers stand­ing in the way of glob­al recog­ni­tion and suc­cess for ca­lyp­so and so­ca.

It is a task for which he is well qual­i­fied, with an im­pres­sive track record that in­cludes win­ning the Caribbean Song Fes­ti­val in 1987 when he was just 12-years-old, be­com­ing the first Trinida­di­an and youngest to ever win that con­test.

In ad­di­tion, he won a Soul Train Award for Best In­ter­na­tion­al Per­for­mance for the song Min­istry of Road (M.O.R.) and has fea­tured in sold-out per­for­mances at some pres­ti­gious en­ter­tain­ment venues around the world, in­clud­ing New York’s Madi­son Square Gar­den.

Through it all, Mon­tano has nev­er strayed from his T&T roots, ex­em­pli­fied in his part­ner­ship with his home­town steel­band, Siparia Del­tones. The re­sults of that col­lab­o­ra­tion in­clude a duet with late South African mu­si­cian Masakela for the song The Meet­ing Place on the Siparia to Sowe­to project.

Mon­tano’s vi­sion to see the mu­sic of T&T get­ting a big­ger share in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket can gain more im­pe­tus from his Di­manche Gras vic­to­ry. In ad­di­tion, the mes­sage in his song about so­ca be­ing deeply root­ed in the tra­di­tions of ca­lyp­so should in­spire more of the part­ner­ships and in­no­va­tions need­ed to take it to a high­er lev­el.

This year’s Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion show­cased the di­ver­si­ty that has been miss­ing from that stage for too long, with thought-pro­vok­ing so­cial com­men­taries and a Road March front run­ner in the mix. It was the per­fect set­ting for a ti­tle-win­ning pow­er­ful ren­di­tion of a tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so by the King of So­ca.

Long live ca­lyp­so and so­ca!