Michelle A Eng Leang

So­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano is work­ing on a new track with Kasey Phillips of KMP Mu­sic Lab in South Trinidad. Dur­ing a record­ing ses­sion late Fri­day, Machel asked to hear the a cap­pel­la. In a mat­ter of sec­onds the sound­proofed room was filled with his voice, each word was pro­nounced per­fect­ly. Machel sat hunched over the mix­ing board, lis­ten­ing to his own voice, tweak­ing here and there. It was ob­vi­ous he is a true mas­ter of his craft. At 37 years of age, he ad­mits to just com­ing out of his best Car­ni­val yet hav­ing won three ti­tles. "Now is the time to keep the mo­men­tum go­ing," he said and he con­tin­ued to work on edit­ing the track. He was asked by Dre Skull, known for work­ing with Vy­bz Kar­tel, to write a track for an up­com­ing 'rid­dim'. "I've been ap­proached by so many peo­ple but I had to fo­cus on Car­ni­val. Now that I am wind­ing down from that, I can fo­cus on my oth­er projects," he ex­plained. And there seems to be many.

Ca­su­al­ly dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, Machel spoke of his up­com­ing work for the Lon­don 2012 Olympics, a project he is work­ing on with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Olympic Com­mit­tee. The aim is to pro­duce a cou­ple of tracks, draw­ing on the hits from Car­ni­val 2012, with a view to sup­port­ing all Caribbean ath­letes with mu­sic from the re­gion. "It's an ex­cel­lent plat­form to pro­mote so­ca in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, as the Caribbean ath­letes are card­ed to do big things in Lon­don. We want to show our sup­port in mu­sic and re­al­ly show the world what we have to of­fer." Machel ex­pressed hope that the tracks will get air­play on ra­dio sta­tions in the UK and Eu­rope, build­ing on the mo­men­tum of Lon­don 2012. Al­though aware that time is against him, he is con­fi­dent he can re­lease sev­er­al tracks that can con­tribute to the over­all pres­ence of the Caribbean at this year's Olympics and act as a se­ries of an­thems to sup­port and con­tribute to ex­cel­lence in sport com­ing out of the re­gion. This is all part and par­cel of Machel's ob­jec­tive to break in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket in a big way. He has been putting to­geth­er the main parts of his ma­chine to achieve this, in­clud­ing a brand new stu­dio in Los An­ge­les.

Why LA? Machel be­lieves it is the per­fect en­vi­ron­ment to not on­ly fo­cus on his work for the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, but to net­work with the right peo­ple and fur­ther un­der­stand the busi­ness. He said it has al­ways been his mis­sion to take so­ca to the world. He chuck­les as he re­mem­bers a video of him­self at nine dis­cussing the same ob­jec­tive. "It amazes me that at nine, I knew what I want­ed to do and to hear my­self say the same words I say now." Machel re­calls that at age eleven, when his peers were lip sync­ing to R&B and reg­gae and gain­ing a lot at­ten­tion from the girls at par­ties, he was not as pop­u­lar with his so­ca mu­sic per­for­mances. He knew he could switch and en­joy the same at­ten­tion as those try­ing to sound like Boyz II Men, New Edi­tion and oth­er artistes at the time. "I chose so­ca. The mu­sic of my coun­try. I couldn't aban­don my cul­ture. That is what I was born to do," he de­clared.

Machel is well on his way to con­quer­ing the world and tak­ing so­ca with him. He was re­cent­ly ap­proached by Def Jam Record­ings via their lat­est artiste, Je­re­mih, who was ex­posed to so­ca on a re­cent writ­ing camp, host­ed by Def Jam, in Bar­ba­dos. Je­re­mih was at­tract­ed to so­ca and de­cid­ed to pen a track, so he con­tact­ed Mon­tano hop­ing to gain from his ex­per­tise. It is not con­firmed whether the track will be re­leased, but these op­por­tu­ni­ties prove to Machel that so­ca can make it. It is in this same way, he was ap­proached by Pit­bull, Wyclef Jean and Doug E Fresh, who are all in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned artistes, who at one point want­ed to re­lease so­ca tracks. Machel is def­i­nite­ly the go-to source for ex­per­tise as over the years he has be­come syn­ony­mous with so­ca.