What’s next for Mr Fete?

With his double victories in the International Power Soca Monarch and the Groovy Soca Monarch competitions during the 2012 Carnival, Machel Montano has established himself as the pre-eminent musical artiste of his generation in the Southern Caribbean.

Singing Pump Yuh Flag, to take the crown as this year’s Power Soca Monarch, Mr Montano comprehensively outperformed both Iwer George and Destra Garcia with his unique combination of extraordinary energy, stagecraft and an almost flawless presentation that added a dramatic entry from within the bowels of the National Stadium crowd to the acrobatics of his back-up dancers, strategically-timed fireworks, the introduction of local icons and the blast-off of a rocketman as he sent his message to the universe. As he related to radio listeners who were waiting for the results on Saturday morning, his Pump Yuh Flag performance, which had the production values of an Oscar awards performance, resulted from his relentless search for perfection and included the renting of the Ato Boldon stadium for a full run through and the use of the National Stadium on Friday morning for a complete five-hour dress rehearsal. In sweeping this year’s Soca Monarch competition, Mr Montano added to his victory in last year’s competition when the catchy hit Advantage was adjudged to be the winner. Advantage went on to take the 2011 Road March prize.

 

 

Among the lessons that his competitors should take from his performance on Fantastic Friday is that a first-class presentation requires a great deal of preparation, practice and perspiration along with the expenditure of large sums of money to get the best dancers, musicians and props. Machel Montano has clearly raised the bar for local stage performances in T&T. Although he is still short of his 40th birthday, Mr Montano is a veteran in the business of performing to large numbers of people—as anyone who is old enough to remember his electrifying performance as a primary school pupil of 11, competing in the 1986 Calypso Monarch Competition on the mammoth stage at the Queen’s Park Savannah with the song Too Young to Soca, with which he placed fifth. With performing abilities as prodigious as the late Michael Jackson, the question that has troubled many of his local and regional fans is:  Why has Machel Montano not been able to translate his local and regional success into international stardom of the kind now being enjoyed by the Barbadian pop queen Rihanna and Trinidad-born hip-hop star Nicki Minaj? It certainly is not because he lacks the talent, energy or vocal abilities of those two young Caribbean artistes.

 

It may be because Mr Montano does not want to water down his soca in an attempt to make the international breakthrough achieved by Vincentian Kevin Lyttle with the soca ballad Turn Me On, originally released in 2001, and by The Baha Men with the Anslem Douglas-written and performed Who Let the Dogs Out? in 2000. The issue then becomes does Mr Montano have the appropriate marketing infrastructure around him to facilitate songs like Mr Fete or Pump Yuh Flag becoming international hits or is it that the soca genre is too limited in its scope to facilitate consistent international hits. We would imagine that it is Mr Montano’s ambition to have the kind of international success enjoyed by Rihanna and Minaj—success which would automatically limit his ability to perform in future International Soca Monarch competitions because he would be busy with an international performing and touring schedule. Perhaps part of the answer would be for Mr Montano to spend some time after Ash Wednesday studying and thinking about the music from the Caribbean that has made it big internationally in the last 40 years. That study may lead him to 56 Hope Road, Kingston, Jamaica—the residence of a man who is dead now, but who became a huge international success without compromising his art.