Kali­fa Clyne

Ca­lyp­so Rose was brought to tears as so­ca artiste Machel Mon­tano paid trib­ute to her dur­ing his con­cert-The Re­turn-at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day night.Rose, whose re­al name is McArtha Lin­da Sandy-Lewis, joined Mon­tano on stage for a per­for­mance of her hit song Tem­po had the thou­sands in at­ten­dance singing her lyrics word for word as they swayed to the mu­sic.At the end of the per­for­mance, Mon­tano asked the ca­lyp­so icon to re­main on stage and called for Slinger Fran­cis­co (The Mighty Spar­row) who had per­formed ear­li­er to re­turn to the stage so he could prop­er­ly pay trib­ute to the leg­endary ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

Mon­tano then called for na­tion­al sport­ing he­roes, foot­ball play­er Dwight Yorke and crick­eter Bri­an Lara to come to the stage and crown the two icons- Spar­row and Rose-as the King and Queen of Car­ni­val.Mon­tano al­so told the crowd he felt priv­i­leged to be stand­ing be­tween the two ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and not­ed that this year he would cel­e­brate 30 years in the mu­sic busi­ness.As Lara and Yorke placed the crowns on the heads of the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, tears came to Rose's eyes, and Fran­cis­co ap­peared to be over­whelmed and re­peat­ed­ly shout­ed "Oh God."While on stage, Mon­tano thanked the large crowd for sup­port­ing so­ca mu­sic and lo­cal cul­ture and went on to an­nounce that all tick­et out­lets for the con­cert had re­port­ed that tick­ets had been sold out and 35,000 peo­ple had at­tend­ed the event.

The con­cert was filled with sur­pris­es as Mon­tano kept call­ing out what seemed to be a nev­er end­ing list of artistes which in­clud­ed 18-year-old Trin­bag­on­ian Aaron Fresh, who sang a remix of Mon­tano's song Bend Over, Walk­er Hor­nung, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with Mon­tano for his sin­gle With Or With­out You, and hip hop artiste Pit­bull.Mon­tano per­formed past hits like Big Truck, Mu­sic Farm and Tay Lay Lay with past Xtatik band mem­bers Pe­ter C Lewis and Dar­ryl Hen­ry (Farmer Nap­py), in­cit­ing screams and cheers from the packed sta­di­um.

As the con­cert pro­gressed, awards were giv­en to var­i­ous ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of their con­tri­bu­tions to lo­cal cul­ture.Na­tion­al foot­ball hero Rus­sell Lat­apy was called to the stage to present an award to ca­lyp­son­ian Ex­plain­er.Lat­er in the con­cert, so­ca artiste Rod­ney Le Blanc (Ben­jai)-af­ter per­form­ing the song Amnesty with Mon­tano-pre­sent­ed an award to Ed Wat­son, the orig­i­nal pro­duc­er of the melody for his song Tri­ni.

The con­cert was a cel­e­bra­tion of cul­ture as Mon­tano not on­ly paid trib­ute to leg­ends like Rose, Spar­row and Tim­o­thy Watkins (Baron) but al­so cel­e­brat­ed the con­tri­bu­tions made by late en­ter­tain­ers, Troy­don Cruick­shank (Blaz­er Dan) who was mur­dered last year, Shel­don "Shel Shok" Ben­jamin, and for­mer Xtat­ick band mem­ber, Wayne Ro­driguez.