Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

Machel Mon­tano was born in Trinidad, at­tend­ed school in Ja­maica and spent much of his life trav­el­ling around the Caribbean work­ing with pro­duc­ers, oth­er mu­si­cians and singers and en­ter­tain­ing the mass­es.His life as the quin­tes­sen­tial Caribbean man was the back­drop against which he preached the gospel of Caribbean uni­ty to a group of West In­di­an stu­dents ear­li­er this month. Mon­tano was the keynote speak­er at the Flori­da As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Stu­dents (FACS) 40th Con­fer­ence on Lead­er­ship at Mi­a­mi Dade Col­lege, North cam­pus, Flori­da."Now is the time to unite and speak to the world. In num­bers we are a greater force," he said, urg­ing the stu­dents, many of whom showed up to the event with the var­i­ous flags of their coun­tries.

In an im­pas­sioned speech punc­tu­at­ed with singing, danc­ing and a brief roll call of the is­lands rep­re­sent­ed, Mon­tano stressed we are all one and that the fu­ture of the Caribbean is in shar­ing mu­sic and tech­nol­o­gy but more im­por­tant­ly shar­ing our­selves."We must do away with the at­ti­tude, as we unite, of the in­di­vid­ual, king of the rock. I think of a uni­fied bloc pool­ing re­sources and pro­mot­ing the unique USWI, the Unit­ed States of the West In­dies. Re­mem­ber Cari­com has failed but we have mu­sic, art, the com­put­er, so­cial me­dia...," he said, in­vok­ing squeals as he urged the stu­dents to fol­low him on In­sta­gram.

Mon­tano said he be­gan pro­mot­ing re­gion­al uni­ty ear­ly on in his ca­reer when he de­cid­ed to pro­mote ca­lyp­so and so­ca over the for­eign gen­res pre­ferred by his gen­er­a­tion.When he chose to do so­ca, he de­vel­oped a treaty in his mind to make it at­trac­tive to the younger au­di­ences by in­cor­po­rat­ing the pop­u­lar mu­sic such as dance­hall in­to it."I start­ed to mix it with reg­gae...Bee­nie Man, Gen­er­al De­gree, TOK, Shag­gy, Red Rat...in the be­gin­ning I was ridiculed...what yuh bring­ing Ja­maica in for?"Re­veal­ing to the au­di­ence that he was dead for the first six min­utes of his life, Mon­tano, 39, said he pulls strength in low mo­ments from know­ing he had to strug­gle from the very be­gin­ning to sur­vive."It says to me I have a pur­pose," he said."If you find your pur­pose half your job is done. When you do find your pur­pose you have to own it."

Mon­tano said once he knew his pur­pose laid in mak­ing so­ca pop­u­lar and us­ing his mu­sic to unite the Caribbean, he was de­ter­mined to achieve great­ness."I am not the best dancer, I am not the best singer, I am not the best mu­si­cian but I have a good ed­u­ca­tion and was smart. I knew how to put enough to­geth­er and use the pur­pose and phi­los­o­phy of uni­ty and make some­thing great," he said.Stat­ing that every time he want­ed to be great, he re­turned to spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, which keeps him ground­ed."To be spir­i­tu­al is to know your­self and to know that voice your­self and lead with that," he said, not­ing that lead­ing some­times means fight­ing for change."I had to fight for bet­ter dress­ing rooms, screens on every stage, for young peo­ple voic­es to be heard and re­spect­ed, for high­er wages," he re­called.

Lead­er­ship, he said, al­so means lead­ing in­to the un­known and he had to in­no­vate and change in or­der to de­liv­er a bet­ter qual­i­ty sound. That is how he turned in­to the first High De­f­i­n­i­tion (HD) hu­man, he said, as he sought to trans­mit his mes­sages in a clear­er voice. Speak­ing on the top­ic of suc­cess, Mon­tano said one yard­stick he us­es to mea­sure suc­cess is the num­ber of peo­ple he has made suc­cess­ful such as fel­low vo­cal­ists Patrice Roberts and Farmer Nap­py."We are here on this earth for re­la­tion­ships, to com­mu­ni­cate...we are here for in­di­vid­ual rea­sons with­in your­self but none of those pur­pos­es would be ex­e­cut­ed if you don't have re­la­tion­ships, if you don't share with oth­er peo­ple, share ideas, share dreams, share sto­ries."Mon­tano end­ed his speech with words of ad­vice to the stu­dents, among them that they should crit­i­cise less and com­pli­ment more, that they should try to be great thinkers, skil­ful man­agers, be hum­ble, no­ble and be in­spi­ra­tional lead­ers with vi­sion, com­pas­sion and in­tegri­ty."We are one by his­to­ry, blood, sweat, tears. I want you to nur­ture this home, man­age this Caribbean with good fa­thers and good moth­ers," he said. Mon­tano end­ed his ad­dress with an im­promp­tu per­for­mance of his song, Hap­pi­est Man Alive.