Sarah Chadee

As a gieN­ET­WORK in­tern this sum­mer, I was giv­en the once in a life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet and in­ter­view many mu­si­cal artistes, all of whom taught me very valu­able lessons. One of the artistes who stood out from the rest was the King of So­ca him­self, Machel Mon­tano. Machel start­ed off by telling the campers at the TSTT Foun­da­tion's An­nu­al Sports and Cul­tur­al camp that he was born with no heart­beat and con­se­quent­ly, his par­ents al­ways said, "Machel, you have a pur­pose."

Grow­ing up in a poor fam­i­ly, Machel said he nev­er dreamed that he would be what he is to­day and thanks his par­ents for work­ing so hard to sup­port him. He said, "My friends al­ways thought that my ca­lyp­so songs were very bor­ing, so I start­ed to sing oth­er songs yet still tried to add a bit of what was ME to it." What I ad­mired the most of what he had to share was, "Be true to who you are; no mat­ter what you want to do, do your best, you don't have to be a doc­tor or busi­ness­man..." When asked about his book, Boy Boy and The Mag­ic Drum, Machel said the pur­pose of it was to give back to and be able to con­nect with the younger gen­er­a­tion.

Trinidad is be­com­ing too Amer­i­can­ised, he said–some­thing that I to­tal­ly agree with. Machel men­tioned that many youths know about so many Amer­i­can he­roes and fail to re­alise that there are nu­mer­ous he­roes right here in Trinidad. He want­ed to cre­ate a hero for the youths and make them aware that Trinidad cre­at­ed the steel pan and be­cause of that, Trinidad is a leader of the world. He al­so men­tioned that we all need to go green, say­ing, "Here's your pur­pose, save the earth." Machel went on to ed­u­cate the campers on ways they can go green and help solve this world cri­sis. He want­ed Boy Boy to be an in­spi­ra­tion to and show them that "No mat­ter where you come from, you can achieve a big goal."

As more of a rock­er than a So­ca fan, I was mes­merised when he did the acoustic ver­sions of his songs on the gui­tar. That seemed to pierce the depths of my soul and spir­it, and I told him that it was the most amaz­ing lo­cal per­for­mance I've ever seen. The lyrics of his songs sud­den­ly seemed so in­spi­ra­tional and pro­found to me and still echo through my head to­day: " I know we gun­na make it/Yeahh yeheyy/Cause I heard the chil­dren say/We not giv­ing up."

I asked if he planned on do­ing an acoustic al­bum some­day.

When asked which So­ca artiste he ad­mired the most, he said that he sees them all of as his chil­dren and sees a part of him­self in each of them. He ex­pressed his deep love for mu­sic, say­ing, "I'm some­body who mu­sic pass­es through' and that 'Fame push­es you to be a bet­ter per­son." Machel al­so shared that his mu­si­cal he­roes are Michael Jack­son and Bob Mar­ley, and that he has read both Nel­son Man­dela and Ma­hat­ma Ghan­di's books.

It is im­por­tant for me to say that no mat­ter how the press has of­fend­ed his name from time to time, I see him as a role mod­el to all. Com­ing from an area close to his, I un­der­stand how hard it must have been for him to ex­cel so im­mense­ly and even though he did so well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, he went along with what his heart told him to do–mu­sic. Though he didn't come from the best back­ground, he shone out from the rest to be the star that he is to­day.