An­ge­lo Mar­celle

Machel Mon­tano, aka Boy Boy, Mr Car­ni­val or Hes­us Di­vine (HD), what­ev­er you want to call him, gave an ex­pect­ed scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mance on Mon­day night at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Wood­brook.

Usu­al­ly ti­tled Al­ter­na­tive Con­cert, the name was changed to The Re­turn due to his ab­sence from the Car­ni­val scene last year. Un­like his last con­cert in 2009 at the same venue, there were no moko jumbies, big drums and an­gels fill­ing the stage.

This time around the en­ter­tain­er fo­cused on pay­ing trib­ute to past and present so­ca and ca­lyp­so artistes, who would have set the tone and paved the way for him to now make his con­tri­bu­tion to the so­ca world. Machel emerged out of a met­al box that was wheeled on stage. Dressed in a red leather out­fit with match­ing red glass­es and shoes, he be­gan with his Road March con­tender and So­ca Monarch dit­ty, Ad­van­tage.

This sent the crowd in a fren­zy, wav­ing any­thing they held in their hands. Four­teen more per­form­ers joined Mon­tano on stage, among them HD mem­bers Farmer Nap­py, Zan and Patrice Roberts. Farmer Nap­py, who is the longest stand­ing mem­ber of the band, re­mained on stage with Mon­tano af­ter the oth­ers had made their ex­it, and was joined by for­mer band mem­ber Pe­ter C Lewis to­geth­er the three took the au­di­ence on a mu­si­cal jour­ney back to the days when Machel Mon­tano HD was called Xtatik.

The ac­tion start­ed around 10.15 pm with new­ly crowned Ju­nior Monarch King, Ben­jai.

As ex­pect­ed, Ben­jai, who has per­formed with Machel on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in pre­vi­ous years, had the crowd in the palm of his hands. As the crowd grew to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 strong in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Machel's en­trance, Kess the Band showed that it had tapped in­to its niche in the so­ca mar­ket. Backed by his fe­male dancers, Kees pushed peace, love and uni­ty, as did all the per­form­ers on the night. He shared the spot­light with vet­er­an ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Ex­plain­er and Baron, who proved that their voic­es were still loved. Singer and song writer Ker­win Dubois fol­lowed, with a slight im­prove­ment in his on­stage per­for­mance.

Dur­ing the in­ter­mis­sion a count down clock was show on sev­er­al screens along the cov­ered foot­ball pitch and on the stage. Some pa­trons in the plat­inum sec­tion had to wait the en­tire in­ter­mis­sion time be­fore they got their re­fresh­ments. But those in the gen­er­al area didn't have that prob­lem. Their is­sue, how­ev­er, was the dis­tance from their sec­tion to the stage. Pa­trons felt some­what slight­ed, as this was not the pre­vi­ous arrange­ment for Machel's last con­cert. Sev­er­al trib­utes were made on the night. Among those ho­n­oured were Wayne Ro­driguez, Blaz­er Dan, Shel­don "Shel Shok" Ben­jamin, Ex­plain­er, Baron, Ca­lyp­so Rose, and The Mighty Spar­row.

The lat­ter two per­formed one song be­fore be­ing crowned the of­fi­cial King and Queen of Car­ni­val.

Ca­lyp­so Rose was crowned by for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller Dwight Yorke, while The Mighty Spar­row was giv­en the ho­n­our by Bri­an Charles Lara. Emo­tions ran high for both ho­n­ourees as Ca­lyp­so Rose shed a few tears, while Spar­row de­clared, "This is the best day of my life." The 2011 Chut­ney Monarch win­ner Rik­ki Jai, Max­imus Dan, and Bar­ba­di­an singers Al­li­son Hinds and Lil Rick gave short pre­sen­ta­tions be­fore the in­ter­na­tion­al acts of Aaron Fresh, Mo­hom­bi and Pit­bull came on stage. Orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to end at mid­night, the show went on till 1.45 am