Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

So­ca is ca­lyp­so.

So­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano fur­ther ce­ment­ed his place among the great­est per­form­ers to grace a stage in T&T, af­ter he was crowned this year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch for his com­po­si­tion Soul of Ca­lyp­so at the Di­manche Gras yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Al­ready con­sid­ered by many to be the “King of So­ca”, Mon­tano added an­oth­er jew­el to his al­ready im­pres­sive crown of ac­co­lades on his re­turn to the com­pe­ti­tion, a lit­tle over 30 years since his last ap­pear­ance at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

With the achieve­ment, Mon­tano be­came the first per­son to win all the ju­nior and se­nior in­di­vid­ual Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions, hav­ing se­cured the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Young King, five So­ca Mon­archs, and ten Road March ti­tles dur­ing the course of his decades-long ca­reer.

He al­so joined Win­ston “Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley as the on­ly per­form­ers to se­cure vic­to­ries in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Road March and the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions.

The mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion was not lost on Mon­tano, who de­scribed it as his great­est achieve­ment to date, as he was joined on stage by his moth­er, Eliz­a­beth, and wife, Re­nee, to col­lect his cer­e­mo­ni­al $500,000 cheque and the keys to a ma­roon Suzu­ki Grand Vi­tara val­ued at over $300,000.

He lat­er gift­ed the car to his moth­er.

Mon­tano said, “This is the great­est mo­ment. It has to be the great­est mo­ment be­cause it was not de­signed by me.”

“It was not easy but it was ef­fort­less and joy­ful,” he added.

In­spired by his on­go­ing pur­suit of a Mas­ter’s in Car­ni­val Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), for which he took a hia­tus from so­ca ac­tiv­i­ties this year to pur­sue, Mon­tano de­liv­ered a live­ly his­to­ry les­son on the evo­lu­tion of the coun­try’s mu­si­cal art­forms, from kalen­da to cariso tra­di­tion­al folk mu­sic to mod­ern ca­lyp­so and so­ca, as he took the stage ear­ly at the Di­manche Gras show on Sun­day night.

With a well chore­o­graphed pre­sen­ta­tion syn­ony­mous with his so­ca ren­di­tions, Mon­tano de­liv­ered his song’s catchy lyrics to its rudi­men­ta­ry but in­fec­tious melody in a per­for­mance which was ar­guably the most en­er­getic in the com­pe­ti­tion in re­cent mem­o­ry and mild­ly rem­i­nis­cent of win­ners dur­ing the past peak of its pop­u­lar­i­ty.

“Born around 1974 to a moth­er named Ca­lyp­so. Ju­nior ap­peared to be so much more. Over the years he start to grow ...” Mon­tano sang.

“He is the head of the fet­ing class, the heart of the Car­ni­val. He is the jump­ing legs in the mas, the waist­line caus­ing bac­cha­nal. A moth­er’s child just can­not hide and this every­body know. If you look re­al deep down in­side, so­ca is the soul of ca­lyp­so.”

Hav­ing been ad­mit­ted­ly “too young” when he placed fifth dur­ing his first for­ay in the com­pe­ti­tion as an 11-year-old in 1986, and falling just short with a third place fin­ish in 1991, Mon­tano, now a vet­er­an per­former, had en­tered his third Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal the clear favourite, hav­ing topped the pre­lim­i­nary and semi­fi­nal rounds.

How­ev­er, Mon­tano did not rest on his on lau­rels, as he added to his al­ready im­pres­sive pre­sen­ta­tion at last week’s Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta with guest ap­pear­ances and a troupe of back-up dancers scout­ed from schools in east Port-of-Spain.

He brought out for­mer monarch Ter­ri Lyons’ son to play the icon­ic in­tro to David Rud­der’s 1986 ti­tle-win­ning hit “Bahia Girl” on the steel­pan. He was joined on stage by his moth­er and grand­fa­ther Austin “Su­perBlue” Lyons.

Mon­tano’s per­for­mance al­so fea­tured a sam­ple of Watch Out My Chil­dren from so­ca’s found­ing fa­ther Lord Shorty, who in his lat­er years adopt­ed the Ras Short I ti­tle.

Mon­tano’s pre­sen­ta­tion al­so fea­tured cameos from con­tro­ver­sial four-time monarch We­st­on “Cro Cro” Rawl­ins and vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Daniel “Trinidad Rio” Brown for the por­tion of his song in which he com­i­cal­ly ques­tioned whether his fa­ther was a ca­lyp­son­ian.

At the end of his pre­sen­ta­tion, which end­ed just short of the eight min­utes al­lot­ted to each con­tes­tant, there was no de­bate among those present that the oth­er com­peti­tors would have to sur­pass a mas­ter­ful ef­fort to earn the ti­tle.

Speak­ing af­ter be­ing crowned, Mon­tano ad­mit­ted his next ca­reer goal be­fore pur­su­ing his stud­ies was at­tempt­ing to match the record 11 Road March ti­tles held by Lord Kitch­en­er.

“I did not know that go­ing back to school would bring me here. That is the great­ness of God,” an emo­tion­al Mon­tano said.

“You can’t dream up what the cre­ator has for you,” he added.

He thanked his lec­tur­ers, in­clud­ing nine-time ca­lyp­so monarch Dr Hol­lis “Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool and Kris­son “Seraphim” Joseph, the son of ca­lyp­so great Seadley “Mighty Pen­guin” Joseph, for en­cour­ag­ing him to com­pose the ca­lyp­so and com­pete.

“His (Joseph’s) class in­spired me and de­mand­ed that I write a ca­lyp­so and it was the great­est ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

De­spite be­ing in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try for al­most four decades, he ad­mit­ted he has learned about nu­mer­ous as­pects of lo­cal cul­ture while purs­ing his stud­ies. He sug­gest­ed that ca­lyp­so should be part of the na­tion­al school cur­ricu­lum.

“I think some of the things I learned should be taught in pri­ma­ry school. This is our in­dige­nous cul­ture and why we did not learn about this in school?” he said.

Mon­tano said he chose sim­ple lyrics for the song so it could be ap­pre­ci­at­ed by all age groups.

“I take the pri­ma­ry school ca­lyp­so that every­one could sing and un­der­stand. But it have great depths in the sto­ry,” he said.

“The main mes­sage in this song is all of we is one,” he added.

Asked whether he would de­fend his crown, Mon­tano said, “Yuh must de­fend your crown with ho­n­our. The fun for me is just get­ting start­ed.”

He al­so en­cour­aged oth­er pop­u­lar so­ca artistes to re­turn to their ca­lyp­so roots to at­tempt to de­throne him.

“I will be here and I en­cour­age all to get in­volved. Come for me. I ready for it,” he said.

Mon­tano’s suc­cess in the com­pe­ti­tion, which was im­me­di­ate­ly laud­ed by his large fan­base on so­cial me­dia, was not met with the same en­thu­si­asm by some ca­lyp­so “purists” at the event, who favour more hard-hit­ting so­cial com­men­tary. They were, how­ev­er, in no doubt of the even­tu­al out­come.

One for­mer monarch, who did not com­pete this year but has a pen­chant for cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ing the out­come of the an­nu­al con­test, gave his pre­dic­tion as he strolled by back­stage hours be­fore the judges’ de­ci­sion was an­nounced.

“What I can tell you is that ca­lyp­so did not win tonight,” he said.

Plac­ing sec­ond was 2011 monarch Karene As­che, who was hop­ing to earn her sec­ond ti­tle with her typ­i­cal­ly soul­ful per­for­mance of her so­cial com­men­tary No Ex­cuse, which ex­claimed that pover­ty is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a life of crime.

Rod­er­ick “Chuck” Gor­don, who won back-to-back ti­tles in 2014 and 2015, missed out on se­cur­ing a third with his an­ti-colo­nial satir­i­cal piece Charlsie, which tar­get­ed British monarch King Charles.

Peren­ni­al fi­nal­ist Kurt Allen, who won his lone ti­tle in 2010, un­der­per­formed in the fi­nal with his in­tro­spec­tive ca­lyp­so, De First In­ves­ti­ga­tion, which called on par­ents to in­ter­vene in their chil­dren’s lives be­fore they go astray.

While it was ar­guably the strongest en­try lyri­cal­ly, Allen’s per­for­mance was par­tial­ly marred by mi­cro­phone feed­back, leav­ing him in eighth place.

Four-time Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch win­ner Aaron Dun­can was a crowd favourite in his first time in a se­nior com­pe­ti­tion but did not im­press the judges, among them for­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, as he placed sev­enth.

Rein­ing monarch Ta’Zyah O’Con­nor was al­so con­vinc­ing­ly de­throned with a ninth place fin­ish.

In tenth place was Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who was crowned Ex­tem­po Monarch late last week and whose en­try in­to Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions has been crit­i­cised due to his role as an ad­min­is­tra­tor, al­beit not in the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion, which runs both com­pe­ti­tions. His per­for­mance of Un­grate­ful was un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly de­mure and on­ly last­ed half the al­lot­ted time.

As­che re­ceived $500,000, while Gor­don re­ceived $350,000. Young King Mi­cal Te­ja earned $250,000 as he fin­ished fourth with his pop­u­lar Road March con­tender DNA.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Helon Fran­cis, who won in 2018, placed fifth and was award­ed $175,000 with his biopic com­po­si­tion Rep­re­sent­ing We, in which he drew on his ex­pe­ri­ence in Par­lia­ment.

All oth­er par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing re­serve Queen Vic­to­ria, re­ceived $45,000.

Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2024 Re­sults

1. ↓Machel Mon­tano–Soul of Ca­lyp­so

2. Karene As­che–No Ex­cuse

3. Rod­er­ick Gor­don–Charlsie

4. Mi­cal Te­ja–DNA

5. Helon Fran­cis–Rep­re­sent­ing We

6. ↓Stacey Sobers-Abra­ham–Re­spect the Tribe

7. Aaron Dun­can–Char­ac­ter

8. Kurt Allen–De First In­ves­ti­ga­tion

9. Ta’zyah O’Con­nor–Fo­cus

10. ↓Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters–Un­grate­ful

11. Bri­an Lon­don–Hell

12. Dil­lion Thomas–It Wasn’t Me