CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Nine-year-old Katelin Sul­tan could not have asked for a bet­ter birth­day gift on Feb­ru­ary 17. She placed fifth out of 14 sea­soned con­tes­tants who could be con­sid­ered vet­er­ans in the 2023 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch (CSM) com­pe­ti­tion at Skin­ner's Park, San Fer­nan­do.

Ri­car­do "Dad­dy Chi­nee" Melville copped the $400,000 first prize with his na­tion-build­ing song "We are One". But Katelin cre­at­ed his­to­ry as the youngest com­peti­tor in the event with her song en­ti­tled "Tell Dem Ah Ready" and her lit­er­al crown­ing glo­ry was win­ning the Queen of Chut­ney So­ca ti­tle.

She was brought on stage in a palan­quin car­ried by bear­ers, and she won the hearts of the mem­bers of the au­di­ence who fol­lowed her com­mands to wave their hands and "shake it" dur­ing her en­er­getic per­for­mance.

Katelin found her call­ing at a ten­der age and be­came so pas­sion­ate about mu­sic that she de­vel­oped the courage and brav­ery to bal­ance her school work and play while do­ing what she loves the most; singing her heart out.

Speak­ing to the Kids' Guardian on Thurs­day, Katelin said "It was the best birth­day ever. I was ex­cit­ed and couldn't be­lieve I made it that far. The sup­port I re­ceived com­pared to some com­peti­tors was over­whelm­ing. I had the en­tire coun­try and fans all over the world root­ing for me, I just want­ed to do my best for them.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I had got­ten a com­mon cold a few days be­fore, so I couldn't give 100 per cent. But I hon­est­ly tried my best for my fans and I did great.

"My sis­ter, Kaylee, want­ed to sup­port me, she didn't go on the stage, but she was my biggest sup­port sys­tem on the night. She said she didn't want to go on stage to take away the at­ten­tion from me. Kaylee is just too fun­ny."

Katelin will be en­ter­ing so­ca and ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions year af­ter year and what­ev­er she wins, she said, she will use it to help the needy.

Katelin placed sec­ond in the School’s In­tel­lec­tu­al Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah (QPS), Port-of-Spain, on Feb­ru­ary 15, and she al­so won the Peo­ple's Choice Award.

When asked how she felt about Machel Mon­tano wish­ing her hap­py birth­day on her spe­cial day and al­so en­dors­ing her as a fu­ture star, she replied that it was like a dream come true.

She could not be­lieve God made it pos­si­ble for her. She said that she was very hap­py and felt so blessed to have that op­por­tu­ni­ty to sing with him, hug him, get his bless­ings, his en­dorse­ment and just the fact that he knew her was mind-blow­ing.

Katelin Sultan surrounded by Dream Carnival masqueraders at the 2023 Chutney Soca Monarch competition, Skinner's Park, San Fernando, on February 17.

Katelin said that she loved "Un­cle Machel" and hopes to record mu­sic with him one day.

She felt cer­tain that she would have been per­form­ing at Mon­tano's One Show con­cert with him, how­ev­er, CSM was on the same night. Hope­ful­ly, she would be able to per­form next year.

Katelin did not feel too sad be­cause she got to spend time with him first thing in the morn­ing, and he even shift­ed his sched­ule around for them to meet.

Mon­tano was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be on CNC3 on Thurs­day, but he came on Fri­day, and he got to wish her good luck and a hap­py birth­day on the day of the event which was al­so her birth­day.

Katelin shared that Mon­tano is her biggest in­sur­ance, she watched his video Too Young To So­ca on YouTube when she was just six years old. She was com­plete­ly blown away by his pas­sion for mu­sic at a young age, and she told her mom that she want­ed to record a so­ca song.

Katelin thanked God for bless­ing her with tal­ent and her par­ents for show­ing her videos of Mon­tano be­cause he be­came her biggest in­spi­ra­tion.

The young­ster be­lieves that Mon­tano saw him­self in her be­cause they both had the same start, and he stood up for her telling the world in a video that he en­dorsed her and she was not too young to so­ca and chut­ney.

Ac­cord­ing to the young artiste, this mo­ti­vat­ed her very much as Mon­tano is one of T&T's su­per­stars and if he be­lieved in her, he knew she can do it just like he did, and she will make her coun­try and peo­ple very proud de­spite some of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty she faced.

Katelin said she al­so felt very lucky and blessed to be en­dorsed and wel­comed by Ravi B one of the coun­try's biggest chut­ney artiste.

She would like to col­lab­o­rate with In­dia-born singer Aruni­ta Kan­ji­lal and Neval Chate­lal, as "Un­cle Neval" had made the time to help her with putting to­geth­er her per­for­mance for CSM. She de­scribed him as "the best ever" and said that she loves him.

She al­so de­feat­ed her dad, Nee­shad Sul­tan, in the com­pe­ti­tion, but she said he was hap­py for her as he was able to fo­cus on her more.

Katelin added that she is a prod­uct of her dad; she got her tal­ent from him, and she will con­tin­ue to make him proud.

Her mom, Ker­ryann Sul­tan, is the back­bone and dri­ving force of the fam­i­ly as she works hard to make their dreams a re­al­i­ty.

Katelin's moth­er and fa­ther are very proud that she has made it this far on her own tal­ent and strength and with their sup­port. She said that their daugh­ter had pure in­ten­tions to­wards every­one, and they will al­ways guide her to be hum­ble and be a bless­ing wher­ev­er she goes.

Sul­tan ex­plained that the key was to stay ground­ed, be prayer­ful, fo­cus on your goals, not re­spond to neg­a­tiv­i­ty, lead by ex­am­ple and do what is best in the in­ter­est of your­self and oth­ers to make the world a bet­ter place.

Ed­u­ca­tion comes first, she said, and be­ing able to bal­ance kids' hob­bies and aca­d­e­mics is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren.

Sul­tan wants to en­cour­age all par­ents to pay at­ten­tion to their kids as you nev­er know what they can be­come if you give them the right start.

They are grate­ful for all their bless­ings and the love and sup­port from fans that have got their daugh­ters this far and help them climb high­er.

Sul­tan thanked every­one who made this pos­si­ble. She said we are liv­ing in a mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety, and it is great to have kids in­volved in cul­ture as they are the fu­ture.

What's next for Katelin?

Katelin wants to rep­re­sent CSM like a true queen and use her prize mon­ey to do sev­er­al things:

1. A seedlings dri­ve to give fam­i­lies veg­etable seedlings to plant such as pi­men­to pep­per, cab­bage, toma­toes, pak­choi, let­tuce, baigan, ochro, sweet pep­pers and sea­son­ing. She be­lieves this will en­cour­age homes to al­ways have a lit­tle kitchen gar­den and grow food to re­duce the high cost of liv­ing.

2. Dis­trib­ute food ham­pers, and she has some clothes to give to needy lit­tle girls younger than her­self.

3. Do a sta­tionery dri­ve.

4. Do some per­son­al care pack­ages for teenage girls.

5. Do a few sur­prise per­for­mances to make her fans hap­py.

6. Send per­son­alised videos out to schools giv­ing mo­ti­va­tion­al speech­es for stu­dents to fol­low their pas­sion and de­vel­op their tal­ents just like she is do­ing. She urged chil­dren to be brave and be­lieve in them­selves as they can make a brighter fu­ture.

Katelin said that she want­ed to set good ex­am­ples for kids to learn about their cul­ture. While she can­not take too much time off from school be­cause her mom would not let her sing as much, she vowed to find a way to en­cour­age the youths.

Now that she is a role mod­el to a lot of kids, Katelin said she will do her best to help them in what­ev­er way she can.