KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Machel Mon­tano will be de­fend­ing his ti­tle tonight with his Car­ni­val 2025 re­lease Bet Meh.

The tune has gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in the pan scene, with steel or­ches­tras like Massy Trinidad All Stars, BP Rene­gades and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Siparia Del­tones choos­ing to fea­ture it in this year’s com­pe­ti­tion.

“I feel this is my ca­lyp­so year to be like the Black Stal­in—Tonight the Black Man Feel­ing to Par­ty or Burn Dem,” said Mon­tano in an in­ter­view with So­ca Hive.

“I re­mem­ber watch­ing those per­for­mances, and it was so­ca songs mak­ing the Grand Stand and North Stand shake and dance but still say­ing some­thing. Bet Meh is say­ing, ‘You want to bet me I can do this?’ So I am go­ing in there con­fi­dent­ly.”

Mon­tano had a jam-packed week, mov­ing from Mon­day Mad­ness to Class @ QRC, then on to the Na­tion­al Panora­ma stage, and Na­tion­al Chut­ney Fi­nals last night.

“I have to rest the limbs and voice in be­tween,” he said.“The ex­cit­ing part is tak­ing up the chal­lenge and do­ing what­ev­er it takes to show up. We are go­ing to make his­to­ry ei­ther way.”

He joked that in­spi­ra­tion for his chut­ney tune Pep­per Vine with Dru­patee and La­dy La­va came from a meme that cir­cu­lat­ed af­ter he won the ca­lyp­so crown in 2024.

“This start­ed as a joke for me when they ‘memed’ me last year—next thing you know, he will win Chut­ney Monarch. I was like, wait a minute, maybe I could do that,” he said.

“It’s been 25 years since I sang Re­al Uni­ty with Dru­patee. She’s beau­ti­ful and still do­ing her thing—her voice is re­al­ly great.”

Mon­tano again joked that one day, we might just see him on the Panora­ma ‘Big Stage’ with pan sticks in his hand.

“I am very ex­cit­ed about

play­ing pan,” he added.“I am

very ex­cit­ed about what the steel

pan can do to help fur­ther our

na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly at this time. My whole the­sis was about that.”

This year has been quite hec­tic for the King of So­ca, who spent two years fo­cus­ing on his de­gree in Car­ni­val Stud­ies with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

“I nev­er ex­pect­ed to be back do­ing a big show on Car­ni­val Mon­day night,” he said.“It feels good to be back in the Car­ni­val sea­son. It is one of my best Car­ni­val sea­sons, and every­thing is hap­pen­ing in di­vine or­der.”

The en­ter­tain­er, who is cel­e­brat­ing 25 years in the busi­ness, launched his al­bum—One De­gree Hot­ter—at the Mon­day Mad­ness event.

“My wife made the joke that I am ‘one de­gree hot­ter’, and I said, ‘That’s a good name for the al­bum,’” he joked.

“The al­bum re­flects that. You see us with a huge chut­ney hit, you see us with a Road March con­tender, you see us with one of the groovy songs on the charts, with one of the retro rid­dims go­ing in­to the ca­lyp­so world. This is an al­bum we felt is on the cusp of some­thing re­al­ly, re­al­ly huge.”

Mon­tano and his team are get­ting ready for the glob­al­i­sa­tion of so­ca mu­sic.

“Re­al­ly tak­ing it to the cor­ners of the globe,” he added.

“It is pop­ping up in more than one place that you would nev­er ex­pect. So­ca is big in Ja­maica all of a sud­den when you know so­ca was sec­ond to dance­hall. A lot of peo­ple are go­ing to the so­ca fetes and lov­ing it and see­ing it in a greater light.

“All over the in­ter­na­tion­al press, there is so­ca pop­ping up here and there. Machel on Tiny Desk rep­re­sent­ing for so­ca—NPR, Kennedy Cen­ter, Bar­clays Cen­ter, UBS Are­na.

“These are big looks, and we feel that if we sup­port this with the right lyrics, the right mu­sic, we could be on the cusp of some­thing big for so­ca.”

Mon­tano and his team at Monk Mu­sic—Che Kothari, Dana, Nate, and Roxy—launched the Sound­bridge Project at the Hilton Trinidad on Feb­ru­ary 20. Set to un­fold over the next year, Sound­bridge will pro­vide lo­cal artistes, pro­duc­ers, and song­writ­ers with re­sources and train­ing to nav­i­gate the evolv­ing mu­si­cal land­scape.

Spear­head­ed by Monk Mu­sic, the Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion (STFOI) project is a part­ner­ship be­tween the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) and IDB LAB, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri).

“We’re at a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion age, and we have tech­nol­o­gy that is rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing that could help these youth en­hance their ca­reers, man­age their ca­reers, and ex­e­cute their dreams,” Mon­tano said.

“Sound­bridge is go­ing to pro­vide tools where they can pick up their phones and see where their mu­sic is be­ing dis­trib­uted. There is no man­age­ment school in the Caribbean where you can learn these things—you learn it on the fly.

“IDB LAB helps to give fi­nances so we can go in there and work with the un­der­priv­i­leged youth and peo­ple who don’t have ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, and we can make some­thing of them.”

At the Sound­bridge launch, Mon­tano sur­prised the au­di­ence with an acoustic per­for­mance of Pardy, his Road March con­tender. While he has per­formed the pop­u­lar hit at sev­er­al Car­ni­val events, it was his mar­ket­ing cam­paign for fans that grabbed peo­ple’s at­ten­tion.

“It is al­ways a dream to have a big song in Car­ni­val and run out to a big crowd with it,” he said.

“We made a joke—those who wrote Pardy, An­dre Jef­fers and Nevon, who pro­duced Kyle from Bad­john Re­pub­lic, they were wor­ried about the fact that I was not per­form­ing in all the fetes,” he said.

“I said to them, ‘Don’t wor­ry, you don’t have to win the race the same way.’ And I said, ‘What we can do is throw a cam­paign—maybe some­one can win a Machel fete be­cause we will have a lot of free nights.’”

The fans cer­tain­ly didn’t dis­ap­point, with many en­tries for the Pardy cam­paign. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the win­ner was the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties.

While Mon­tano forges ahead, crit­i­cism con­tin­ues to come his way.

“Every­body will have an opin­ion,” he said.“I know what I have been do­ing for the in­dus­try. I sit some­times in my bed or my chair with a big smile on my face when I see Farmer Nap­py, when I see Patrice, or when I see any oth­er artiste do­ing some­thing that I know I strug­gled to es­tab­lish, and they can use it.

“I do not need val­i­da­tion from any­body. I know what I have done, and I just let it be be­cause I un­der­stand the na­ture. Be­fore I try to let them un­der­stand how I feel, I seek first to un­der­stand why they would say or do what they do. And I al­ways bring it down to hu­man na­ture.”

In just a few hours, we’ll know if Mon­tano holds on to his crown.