Bo­bie-lee Dixon

In the 20 years of its ex­is­tence the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion has grown big­ger and bet­ter, at­tract­ing thou­sands of ador­ing fans to its world class pro­duc­tion. Artistes who com­pete in the show put for­ward their best, hop­ing to make it to the fi­nals just to have that mo­ment on stage when the world is watch­ing. They try to out-do each oth­er with in­trigu­ing per­for­mances, each one leav­ing the oth­er won­der­ing if their per­for­mance was ac­tu­al­ly con­vinc­ing enough to get them the So­ca Monarch King or Queen ti­tle. Some will cry, some will get mad, some will even say the judges "thief," but on­ly one will walk away the es­teemed win­ner. Last year Machel Mon­tano, who re­turned to the So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion af­ter sev­er­al years of not com­pet­ing, stole the en­tire show with his of­fer­ing, Ad­van­tage. Fans across the globe were able to wit­ness the first time "lyri­cist" in Mon­tano, as he free-styled for the first time giv­ing fel­low artistes pi­cong. An in­no­va­tor in all he does, he had the crowd eat­ing out of the palm of his hands as he, along with his back­up dancers, were sus­pend­ed in the air from time to time on ca­bles, re­sem­bling ac­ro­bats at a cir­cus.

Need­less to say, this cre­at­ed much ex­cite­ment among the crowd. He walked away that night the win­ner, tak­ing home the first ever $2M first prize of­fer from the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. At the launch of So­ca Monarch in De­cem­ber last year, Mon­tano sent a warn­ing to all artistes en­ter­ing this year's com­pe­ti­tion to be pre­pared be­cause they had to deal with him as the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on. T&T is cer­tain­ly proud of this son of the soil, who will be cel­e­brat­ing an of­fi­cial 30 years in the busi­ness. Of course one can on­ly look for­ward to Mr M cel­e­brat­ing three decades of so­ca in pure Machel style, and this can be ob­served at his an­nu­al con­cert now called Machel Mon­day. Not to men­tion, if he de­fends his So­ca Monarch ti­tle to the win come Car­ni­val Fri­day night, then he would tru­ly have a lot to cel­e­brate. By the way, he al­so has plans to en­ter the Groovy So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion this year as well, so "So­ca Monar­chites" look out! Be­cause the king is com­ing again. To­day the T&T Guardian, al­so the of­fi­cial Me­dia Spon­sor for the Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion, is proud to fea­ture Machel Mon­tano as our first artiste in the So­ca Monarch Artiste of the Week Se­ries. Look out next Wednes­day for fea­tured artiste Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller.

Mon­tano's his­to­ry

Machel Mon­tano was born on No­vem­ber 24, 1974 in Care­nage. His fam­i­ly moved to Siparia, south Trinidad when he was very young. Machel at­tend­ed Siparia Boys' RC, then Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, a pres­ti­gious sec­ondary school in San Fer­nan­do, south Trinidad, where he was in the choir led by Cyn­thia Lee-Mack. Mon­tano first shot to fame as a nine-year-old boy with the song Too Young To So­ca while still at­tend­ing pri­ma­ry school. In 1984, along with his old­er broth­er Mar­cus and neigh­bours, the group Prana­son­ic Ex­press was start­ed and in 1989, the band be­came Xtatik. Over the years the Xtatik went through sev­er­al changes and evolved to be­ing known to­day as the HD Fam­i­ly. The so­ca singer, record pro­duc­er and song­writer not­ed for his high en­er­gy and of­ten un­pre­dictable on-stage per­for­mances, has al­so record­ed sev­er­al songs along­side many of Caribbean mu­sic's most pop­u­lar acts in his ca­reer, such as Ad­mi­ral T, Al­i­son Hinds, Bee­nie Man, Ca­lyp­so Rose, Burn­ing Flames, Dru­patee, Wyclef Jean, Canibus, Red Rat, Shag­gy, Spar­row, Denise Bel­fon, Ken Mar­lon Charles (KMC), De­stra, Walk­er Hor­nung, Vy­bz Kar­tel, Mo­hom­bi, G-Unit, Black Stal­in, David Rud­der, Bu­ju Ban­ton, Mr Ve­gas, Doug E Fresh, Pit­bull and many oth­ers. In 1987 he was the youngest fi­nal­ist to ever win the Caribbean Song Fes­ti­val. He now stands as one of the most well-known so­ca acts in the world, us­ing his lever­age as an artiste able to sell-out shows. Re­cent­ly he has moved to the Los An­ge­les area and fur­thered his pur­suit say­ing: "I may not be the one to bring it forth, but in the mean­time, I have a lot of work to do in or­der for some­thing to hap­pen." He is very well known in New York and has had sold out con­certs in Madi­son Square Gar­dens many times over. This year Machel was nom­i­nat­ed for the Black En­ter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion (BET) Soul Train Award.

• In­for­ma­tion on Machel Mon­tano gath­ered from bi­ogra­phies.com