In 1983, Machel Mon­tano won the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so King com­pe­ti­tion at the Siparia Boys’ Ro­man Catholic school.

Among the long list of tro­phies and ti­tles Mon­tano has won in his 40 years of so­ca, this may seem like a mi­nus­cule ac­com­plish­ment.

How­ev­er, that card­board crown sig­nalled the start of Mon­tano’s so­ca jour­ney and was among the mem­o­ra­bil­ia on show when his moth­er, Eliz­a­beth ‘La­dy’ Mon­tano, launched the bi­og­ra­phy for Machel, ti­tled ‘King of So­ca’, last night at GM Labs on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

“The rea­son that we were able to see this mas­ter­piece put to­geth­er is be­cause La­dy has al­ways been a col­lec­tor, she has metic­u­lous­ly col­lect­ed every piece of mem­o­ra­bil­ia, every clip­ping, every out­fit over the 40 years,” host Max­ine Williams told the gath­er­ing at the event.

The ex­hi­bi­tion al­so fea­tured sev­er­al mo­ments in Machel’s long­stand­ing ca­reer, in­clud­ing the icon­ic 1986 cos­tume Machel wore for what was his break­out hit Too Young to So­ca, as well as his 2014 Soul Train Award.

Dr Kwynn John­son was hailed for as­sist­ing in the archiv­ing of Machel’s life and ca­reer.

“This is the sup­port­ing ex­hi­bi­tion to the book launch, so it is the­mat­i­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly or­dered by chap­ter,” John­son said.

The book has sev­en chap­ters.

“All of who have gath­ered here and what you are see­ing as you look around is a re­flec­tion of what is in the book. Tonight, we are bring­ing to life the King of So­ca,” Eliz­a­beth Mon­tano said.

She said the book was start­ed on No­vem­ber 24, 1974, when Machel was de­clared still­born.

“When life was brought in­to him, I knew there was some­thing spe­cial,” she said.

Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, Machel said he would love peo­ple to read the book to get to know him.

“I don’t hold on to any de­fined edges, so I love to be in­ter­pret­ed by peo­ple in their own way, how­ev­er they see it and how­ev­er they see it fit and some­times it is en­ter­tain­ment to me what you think about me,” Machel said.

“So, I am not re­al­ly wor­ried about whether she got it right, I know La­dy knows the sto­ries and I know she knows the sto­ries that even I my­self can’t re­mem­ber,” he added.

Machel de­scribed his moth­er as the “ul­ti­mate in­sid­er.”

Sev­er­al guests were in at­ten­dance at last night’s event, in­clud­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez and Guardian Me­dia Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm.

The book is now avail­able on­line.