Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

Icons are as­so­ci­at­ed with sym­bols of cul­tur­al move­ments that have pro­duced pro­found changes in so­ci­ety. In a Car­ni­val cul­ture, such as T&T, icon­ic ex­pres­sions are em­bossed in the ech­e­lons of so­ca rhythms, which form the bedrock of the fes­ti­val it­self. For many years, artistes have pro­pelled them­selves by sea­son­al de­mand for the mu­sic, on­ly to dis­ap­pear un­til the next year. How­ev­er, one icon­ic fig­ure has been "blaz­ing D trail" and set­ting new stan­dards for the cul­tur­al art form that ex­tends far be­yond the fes­tive sea­son of rev­el­ry. This em­blem­at­ic per­sona is none oth­er than the King of So­ca him­self, Machel Mon­tano. Mon­tano is the quin­tes­sen­tial so­ca artist, who has pledged to take so­ca "to the cor­ners of the globe." This year's Car­ni­val was an his­toric tril­o­gy of tri­umph for him, as he won triple crowns, so­ca monarch, groovy so­ca monarch and the road march, gain­ing the re­spect of those who didn't think he could do it again and the en­vy of many oth­ers. He was one of the first artistes to mix dance­hall and hip hop with So­ca, ac­com­plish­ments that have al­lowed him to ex­pand his scope and en­vis­age the world as his stage. He has won count­less awards both in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly, which at­test to his tru­ly su­per­no­va star­dom ap­peal. In 2011 alone, the In­ter­na­tion­al Reg­gae World Mu­sic Awards be­stowed six ho­n­ours of achieve­ment up­on the So­ca King.

Mr Fete, so named af­ter a sin­gle off his 2012 al­bum, has sold out are­nas from West In­dies to the East In­dies, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, thus in­creas­ing So­ca au­di­ences. As a young artist he gained fame dur­ing his pri­ma­ry school years, where he was un­daunt­ed by crit­ics who felt he was "too young to So­ca." Years af­ter, he grew in­to the hand­some win­er boy who would gy­rate with en­er­getic pulse and pul­veris­ing pal­pi­ta­tions to So­ca beats. For con­sec­u­tive car­ni­vals, he gave us "one more wine" some "Hard wuk" and made his fans "So high" on his per­for­mances. Mon­tano has writ­ten the pages of life's book be­fore the all-see­ing wit­ness that is T&T, as he put it, "my life is an open book." "By all means," Mon­tano has man­aged to stay in the so­ca are­na for 30 years with his unique style and blend of mu­sic, un­time­ly sex ap­peal, and mul­ti­ple tran­si­tions over the years, that have made him the cel­e­brat­ed artist he has be­come. One might even sug­gest that Mon­tano is to so­ca, what Michael Jack­son was to pop, but in or­der to tru­ly mea­sure the val­ue of this so­ca artist, one must first mea­sure the val­ue of his con­tri­bu­tion. The Sun­day Guardian had a chance to in­ter­view the king up close and per­son­al, to get an idea of the em­pire that is "Machel Mon­tano and HD" and how he achieved great­ness, stand­ing res­olute in the face of ob­vi­ous chal­lenges.

Mon­tano, in tune with God, self and life

Mon­tano was in tune with his pur­pose in life as a So­ca artiste from a ten­der age of nine. His par­ents were very in­flu­en­tial in his life and nur­tured his am­bi­tion for the stage. "The first per­son who at­tract­ed me to so­ca was Su­perBlue. I re­mem­ber see­ing him on a spec­tac­u­lar stage throw­ing the mike and mov­ing his feet, I said he looked like Michael Jack­son. I al­so liked Kitch­en­er and I had seen Spar­row, who had a debonair, states­man vibe on stage, like Frank Sina­tra.

Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty was al­so cru­cial in the Mon­tano fam­i­ly and up to this day, Machel would say the same prayer his fa­ther start­ed in 1986, be­fore he graced any stage. "Lord, make this per­for­mance pleas­ing to our­selves, our fans and most im­por­tant­ly pleas­ing to you." "I de­vel­oped that voice with God ear­ly in my life and now. I prac­tise a mix of Catholi­cism and Hin­duism, and in that uni­ty, I have grown and de­vel­oped spir­i­tu­al­ly." Mon­tano ad­mit­ted he want­ed to be­come a fam­i­ly man like his fa­ther, but the sac­ri­fice of who he is has tak­en away that dream. Mar­ried life is some­thing that once at­tract­ed him but he said, it would take a woman who is un­der­stand­ing, flex­i­ble and open mind­ed enough to ac­cept that Machel be­longs to the big­ger pic­ture. De­spite be­ing mar­ried to so­ca, Mon­tano tries to be a mod­el fa­ther to his chil­dren. "I haven't been there for my kids as much as a fa­ther should, but they adore me and what I do. Some­times they will be laugh­ing in amaze­ment by the way fans re­act," said Mon­tano. Mon­tano's chil­dren are Nicholas, age 13, born March 9; Melanie, age 12, born Oc­to­ber 25; and Malaya Jour­ney, age 11, born No­vem­ber 9, "They're all schol­ars," said Machel.

"My youngest daugh­ter was one of the top four in SEA, and my oth­er daugh­ter goes to school with Robert De Niro's kids in a pres­ti­gious arts school in Brook­lyn. Nicholas goes to one of the top schools in At­lanta and he is a ma­jor ac­tor, singer, record pro­duc­er and com­put­er ge­nius. My chil­dren are very lov­ing and learn­ing from them is what I love most about fa­ther­hood."

Mon­tano has rev­o­lu­tionised and ex­port­ed So­ca

Mon­tano did not gloat about the fact that he has sold out many are­nas, some even big­ger than Madi­son Square Gar­den, such as in Bel­gium with 40,000 peo­ple. How­ev­er, he humbly sug­gest­ed, sell­ing out are­nas is not what he has done for so­ca. In­stead, he wished to fo­cus on the big­ger pic­ture of ex­port­ing so­ca. "I have brought peo­ple to this mu­sic, made new fans and lovers of so­ca. Peo­ple in Los An­ge­les who nev­er heard so­ca now love it. "My mis­sion has al­ways been to take Trinidad to the cor­ners of the globe, to make so­ca hip and mix it with hip hop, with R&B which is al­ways a de­vel­op­ing thing for me. So­ca needs its Bob Mar­ley." Mon­tano in­tro­duced a bar­rage of in­ter­na­tion­al artistes to So­ca, by pur­su­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions that rev­o­lu­tionised the sound of the mu­sic. He worked on tracks with Doug e Fresh, Wiclef Jean, Pit­bull, Beanie Man, Red Rat and Shag­gy. He be­lieves rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing so­ca would make young peo­ple want to par­tic­i­pate in it, and see it as a lifestyle and ca­reer.

Ad­vice for young and up­com­ing artistes

Mon­tano could not achieve his suc­cess with­out look­ing up at those who came be­fore him and re­spect­ing their life's work. When asked about what ad­vice he could give to young artistes he said, "one of the first things younger artistes should do, is em­brace the sto­ry of Machel Mon­tano." "They should un­der­stand that I have em­braced Spar­row, Kitch­en­er, Stal­in, Denyse Plumber, David Rud­der and oth­ers. There is not an artist that came be­fore, that I would talk bad about. I rate them and I bring them on my stages and I em­brace Su­perBlue and every­body that was there be­fore me. I am the on­ly one who is on top of the game for 30 years and cel­e­brat­ing 30 years. Yet, younger ones wouldn't em­brace me; they wouldn't em­brace my sto­ry. When they em­brace that they would un­der­stand what I have done and what worked for me."

Machel in busi­ness and phil­an­thropy

Machel Mon­tano is an en­ter­prise un­to him­self. He cur­rent­ly has a young tal­ent pool of over 50 pro­duc­ers and 30 writ­ers from all is­lands, all parts of the world. One of the great­est things that he has now is the young tal­ent pool that he worked with this year, like Er­phaan Alves, pre­ci­sion pro­duc­tion, full blown en­ter­tain­ment, Ker­wyn Du Bois, Ker­nal Roberts, the dra­ma stu­dio, home base en­ter­tain­ment, who has been win­ning suc­ces­sive road march­es in Grena­da and pro­duc­ing rhythms like Hard Wok, Ticky Wine for ben­jai. Dwayne An­throbus is my key­board play­er; he did Jones and wukup. There is a ma­jor song that he wrote this year, he did one for Patrice Roberts. Dar­ren bai­ley, our oth­er key­board play­er has worked with Swap­pi. Mon­tano said if peo­ple on­ly dive in­to the HD camp they will find that 65 per cent of all the mu­sic be­ing made is by HD. We have so many of our peo­ple in our camp con­tribut­ing to so many oth­er peo­ple.

He al­so re­vealed that Def Jam Records had over 30 writ­ers re­spon­si­ble for writ­ing ma­jor hit songs, for a se­cret writ­ing camp at RA­MA dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. Dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, Mr Fete launched his 3 Ze­ro Rum which is a hand-craft­ed plat­inum rum, mixed by one of the great­est leg­ends, Patrick Pa­tel, An­gos­tu­ra's mas­ter blender and dis­trib­uted by Had­co. 3 Ze­ro is the star brand of the prod­uct, with the gold ver­sion soon to come. Mon­tano said, he is con­stant­ly try­ing to bring Trinida­di­ans back to their roots and en­gage peo­ple to feel proud of every­thing we are in the Caribbean, in Trinidad about self. And in­stead of pop­ping bot­tles of cham­pagne as in the MTV cul­ture, we should go back to the roots of our cul­ture, with a hip kind of rum. One of the ma­jor things on his agen­da for this year is Machel's foun­da­tion which is called "The foun­da­tion for great­ness" and it di­rect­ly aimed at coun­ter­act­ing medi­oc­rity. The base of the foun­da­tion is about read­ing and lit­er­a­cy and then I want the young peo­ple to read about great peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ty like Dwight Yorke, Bri­an Lara, Anya Ay­oung Chee, Gand­hi, Muhammed Ali, Mar­cus Gar­vey, Mal­colm X. I want them to read life sto­ries. I want them to read the sto­ries of the great to in­spire great­ness in them­selves. I want­ed to show every per­son in life is re­al­ly nor­mal, it is just that they have done great things and they made great sac­ri­fices to make these great things greater and they be­come great for stay­ing ded­i­cat­ed to it for a pur­pose and the pur­pose has al­ways been to help hu­man­i­ty and move the world for­ward. It is a no­ble pur­pose. The foun­da­tion will choose one or two chil­dren with po­ten­tial to be­come a great singer, a great foot­baller or a great dancer.