There are mo­ments in a coun­try’s life when a sin­gle fig­ure be­comes more than suc­cess­ful, more than fa­mous, more than dom­i­nant. They be­come a ref­er­ence point—a con­stant that helps de­fine who we are while the world around us keeps shift­ing. For Trinidad and To­ba­go, Machel Mon­tano is that fig­ure.

To talk about Machel pure­ly in terms of hits, awards, or sold-out shows is to miss the re­al essence of his place in our cul­ture. His great­ness is not on­ly in how long he has stayed rel­e­vant, but in how deeply he is wo­ven in­to the emo­tion­al fab­ric of this coun­try. Like Bob Mar­ley to Ja­maica, or Michael Jack­son to glob­al pop cul­ture, Machel rep­re­sents a sound, a spir­it, and a stan­dard that tran­scends eras. He is not just an artist we lis­ten to... he is some­one we have lived along­side.

And that is the qui­et priv­i­lege of this gen­er­a­tion. We have been for­tu­nate enough to wit­ness Machel from boy­hood to man, from child prodi­gy to cul­tur­al pil­lar. We grew up with him. We aged with him. We saw the hunger, the ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, the mis­steps, the rein­ven­tions, the re­lent­less work eth­ic. His sto­ry un­fold­ed in re­al time, not as folk­lore hand­ed down lat­er, but as some­thing we ex­pe­ri­enced sea­son by sea­son, Car­ni­val by Car­ni­val. We are not hear­ing about Machel; we are liv­ing this chap­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry with him.

What makes that even more pow­er­ful is how he has car­ried Car­ni­val it­self. Year af­ter year, re­gard­less of the mood of the na­tion or the per­ceived strength of a sea­son, there is an­tic­i­pa­tion around one thing: when and how Machel will ap­pear on stage.

Even in Car­ni­vals that some dis­miss as “not the best,” even in years where the mu­sic land­scape feels crowd­ed or un­even, he still an­chors the ex­pe­ri­ence. He shows up. He per­forms. He de­liv­ers. He main­tains a lev­el that re­minds every­one what ex­cel­lence looks like.

That con­sis­ten­cy mat­ters. It mat­ters be­cause Car­ni­val is not just a par­ty; it is a re­flec­tion of our iden­ti­ty. When Machel steps on stage, he doesn’t just per­form songs; he re­as­sures a na­tion that its flag­ship cul­tur­al event still has a heart­beat. He car­ries re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­out say­ing it out loud. He serves the mo­ment, the crowd, the cul­ture, and he does it with a pro­fes­sion­al­ism that has be­come al­most in­vis­i­ble be­cause we’ve grown used to it.

This is not to di­min­ish the many out­stand­ing artists who share the space. T&T has nev­er lacked tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty, or voic­es worth cel­e­brat­ing.

That has al­ways been our sto­ry. Long be­fore this era, there were gi­ants who shaped the sound and spir­it of the na­tion—Mighty Spar­row and Lord Kitch­en­er laid foun­da­tions so strong that gen­er­a­tions have built up­on them. Su­perblue and David Rud­der car­ried their own sea­sons of dom­i­nance, each defin­ing mo­ments that still echo through our cul­ture.

In foot­ball, it was no dif­fer­ent. Leroy De Leon, Steve David, War­ren Archibald and oth­ers once held the imag­i­na­tion of the coun­try in their time. Every gen­er­a­tion has its stan­dard bear­ers. Every era has its pil­lars.

There are artistes who in­no­vate, who chal­lenge norms, who bring their own bril­liance to the Car­ni­val ecosys­tem. But it is im­por­tant to say this care­ful­ly and hon­est­ly: not every­one car­ries the weight of ex­pec­ta­tion. Not every­one be­comes ap­point­ment view­ing. Machel does.

That idea of ap­point­ment view­ing is where the com­par­i­son with sport be­comes un­avoid­able.

In foot­ball and sport, T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced this phe­nom­e­non be­fore. Dwight Yorke was one of those fig­ures. Peo­ple bought tick­ets just to see him. Rus­sell Lat­apy car­ried a sim­i­lar pull. Bri­an Lara in crick­et was ap­point­ment tele­vi­sion and sure tick­ets sale for any venue — even non-crick­et fans tuned in be­cause some­thing might hap­pen when he walked to the crease. Viv Richards, Curt­ly Am­brose, Chris Gayle, these were men whose pres­ence alone jus­ti­fied the price of ad­mis­sion. You al­ways felt the team had a chance with these men in the line­up.

And maybe they didn’t guar­an­tee vic­to­ry every time, just as Machel doesn’t guar­an­tee the “best Car­ni­val ever” every year. But they guar­an­teed rel­e­vance. They guar­an­teed stan­dards. They guar­an­teed that the event mat­tered.

And that is what we are cur­rent­ly miss­ing in many ar­eas of our sport­ing cul­ture. Not tal­ent—we have tal­ent. Not ef­fort as many ath­letes work hard and sac­ri­fice deeply. What we lack is that cen­tral, gen­er­a­tional fig­ure who car­ries the sport in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, who draws crowds re­gard­less of form, op­po­nent, or cir­cum­stance. Some peo­ple show up sim­ply be­cause they are there.

This is not a crit­i­cism of the sup­port­ing cast. Far from it. Every great era is built on depth, not just stars. Even Michael Jack­son had col­lab­o­ra­tors. Even Bob Mar­ley had the Wail­ers. Even Bri­an Lara and Michael Jor­dan had team­mates who ac­com­pa­nied them dur­ing their jour­ney of great­ness. But his­to­ry shows us that move­ments still or­bit around sin­gu­lar forces.

Machel Mon­tano is that force for T&T en­ter­tain­ment.

What sep­a­rates him is not just longevi­ty, but ser­vice.

Great­ness nev­er comes easy. It comes with huge de­mands, ex­pec­ta­tions that can be painful at times, and a con­stant pres­sure to de­liv­er when it mat­ters most.

I have nev­er had the chance to ex­pe­ri­ence a prepa­ra­tion be­fore the big stage with Machel, those qui­et dress­ing-room mo­ments, the closed-door re­hearsals, the fi­nal men­tal checks be­fore step­ping out. But I have been ex­treme­ly for­tu­nate to wit­ness what that kind of great­ness looks like in an­oth­er are­na.

I have seen it in the flesh with Rus­sell Lat­apy, Dwight Yorke and a cou­ple oth­ers lead­ing in lock­er rooms on his­toric oc­ca­sions—be­fore T&T faced Bahrain, be­fore the clash with Swe­den at the 2006 World Cup. I saw it again more re­cent­ly with Yorke as head coach dur­ing World Cup qual­i­fiers. The in­ten­si­ty was re­al. The emo­tion was high. Hearts were pump­ing, adren­a­line high. Yet with­in that chaos, there was pres­ence, calm­ness and com­mand.

I will nev­er for­get the feel­ing of walk­ing in­to the Es­ta­dio Na­cional in Guatemala — 35,000 odd fans des­per­ate to over­whelm you, in­tim­i­date you, break you. And then watch­ing a leader walk in with au­thor­i­ty, un­shak­en, cen­tred, ful­ly aware of the mo­ment and ready for it. That au­ra mat­ters. That lead­er­ship mat­ters. And it is the same un­seen weight that some­one like Machel car­ries every time he steps on a Car­ni­val stage.

He has served Car­ni­val, served the mu­sic, served the au­di­ence, and served the idea that ex­cel­lence is not ac­ci­den­tal. Rein­ven­tion has nev­er been an ego ex­er­cise for him; it has been sur­vival, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and re­spect for the craft. He un­der­stands that if he low­ers the bar, the en­tire ecosys­tem feels it.

In that sense, Machel is not com­pet­ing with younger artistes; he is pro­tect­ing the house they per­form in.

We should not wait un­til ret­ro­spec­tives and trib­utes to ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate this. One day, there will be a Car­ni­val with­out Machel on stage, and even say­ing that out loud feels un­com­fort­able. We dread that mo­ment be­cause we know how much he has come to de­fine the sea­son. But I have lived through that feel­ing be­fore.

I per­son­al­ly lived to see the day when a T&T foot­ball team no longer had Dwight Yorke, Rus­sell Lat­apy, or Stern John in it. There was a gen­uine sense of loss when that era end­ed. Those names were not just play­ers on a team sheet—they were iden­ti­ty, con­fi­dence, and be­lief wrapped in­to hu­man form. We feared what would come next. And then re­al­i­ty ar­rived. We en­coun­tered it. We ad­just­ed to it. We kept go­ing.

We con­tin­ued to build around the ab­sence. We tried to make it great again, some­times with suc­cess, some­times not, but al­ways with the un­der­stand­ing that eras do end and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty shifts. That per­spec­tive mat­ters when we think about Machel. His even­tu­al ab­sence will not mean the end of Car­ni­val, just as the ab­sence of Yorke or Lat­apy did not mean the end of foot­ball in this coun­try. But it will re­quire hon­esty, lead­er­ship, and a col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to stan­dards.

For now, we are liv­ing in a rare win­dow of time. A mo­ment where a na­tion can say it wit­nessed great­ness not through old clips or sec­ond-hand sto­ries, but live, loud, and in re­al colour. We are shar­ing this part of life with Machel Mon­tano.

And that, in the grand scheme of cul­ture, mu­sic, so­ca, and en­ter­tain­ment, is some­thing T&T should recog­nise as the bless­ing that it is.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­eled to over 90 coun­tries dur­ing his jour­ney in sport. “Pro Look” is his week­ly col­umn on foot­ball, sport, cul­ture and the hu­man side of the game. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com