On Tues­day (Car­ni­val Tues­day), so­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano will per­form at the biggest event of his ca­reer, the Ma­haShiv­Ra­tri cel­e­bra­tions, at the Isha Yo­ga Cen­ter in In­dia. Ma­haShiv­Ra­tri is one of the largest and most sa­cred fes­ti­vals in In­dia, and the gath­er­ing at Isha Yo­ga Cen­ter at­tract­ed more than 120 mil­lion peo­ple, in per­son and on­line in 2021.

A me­dia re­lease said for Mon­tano this will not be just an­oth­er stage ap­pear­ance, as it is deeply con­nect­ed to his own spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, up­on which he has em­barked with his wife, Re­nee and his man­ag­er, Che Kothari.

"In fact, for the past sev­en months, Mon­tano has been in In­dia par­tic­i­pat­ing in a yo­ga pro­gramme (Sad­hana­pa­da) at the Isha Yo­ga Cen­ter, un­der the tute­lage of Sad­hgu­ru, Yo­gi, mys­tic, and one of the most in­flu­en­tial vi­sion­ar­ies of our time. At Ma­haShiv­Ra­tri, Sad­hgu­ru leads the night-long fes­ti­val of med­i­ta­tion, mu­sic and dance."

The me­dia re­lease said on the night, Mon­tano will per­form new mu­sic from his la­bel MONK mu­sic, a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween him­self and Marge Black­man ti­tled “Touch The Ground” which is fea­tured on the Save Soil Rid­dim pro­duced by DJ Pri­vate Ryan.

“It is one of the most pro­found mo­ments of my life, to be per­form­ing at this fes­ti­val. Af­ter 40 years in the mu­sic in­dus­try, I am over­whelmed with joy and grat­i­tude for this op­por­tu­ni­ty and for what it rep­re­sents on a glob­al lev­el,” Mon­tano said when asked about the per­for­mance.

Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty pleased

News of Monatano's im­pend­ing per­for­mance was met with joy and con­grat­u­la­tions by the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

A me­dia re­lease by Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj, spir­i­tu­al head Satya Anand Ashram said even though Mon­tano be­gan his mu­si­cal jour­ney with ca­lyp­so and so­ca, it has led him to em­brace Hin­duism.

"On what would have been pre­vi­ous­ly know as Machel Mon­day, a time when many Hin­dus would choose to at­tend Machel's fete rather than Ma­ha Shiv­ara­tri the op­po­site is now hap­pen­ing. Machel is now set­ting a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple, and I hope Hin­dus will fol­low his ex­am­ple with equal fer­vour and at­tend mandirs across the land.This is a time when Hin­dus will fast and keep vig­il for the night mak­ing of­fer­ings on the lingum of Lord Shi­va."

The re­lease said Sanatan Dhar­ma has a place for every­one, and the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes Mon­tano with open arms.

"It does not mat­ter what your past was. Every­one has a past. Sanatan Dhar­ma en­cour­ages peo­ple to seek the di­vine, to write a new fu­ture for your­self."