Chester Sam­bra­no

So­ca star Machel Mon­tano is de­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to host his One Show on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day (Car­ni­val Fri­day), while al­so dis­miss­ing the sug­ges­tion that it is re­spon­si­ble for the can­cel­la­tion of this year’s In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (ISM) com­pe­ti­tion.

The ISM or­gan­is­ers sur­prised fans of the event a few weeks ago when they an­nounced they had de­cid­ed to can­cel the show due to a lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port.

Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment was un­able to give the or­gan­is­ers some $10 mil­lion and oth­er con­ces­sions to host the show and in­stead of­fered $3 mil­lion and con­ces­sions.

Many peo­ple have since crit­i­cised Mon­tano for what they called “putting the fi­nal nail in the cof­fin of So­ca Monarch,” which is tra­di­tion­al­ly known as one of the biggest events on Car­ni­val Fri­day.

Speak­ing for the first time on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Mon­tano said he does not see a con­tro­ver­sy.

“I care about So­ca Monarch be­cause I was there from the be­gin­ning,” Mon­tano said, not­ing that 25 years ago, he and So­ca Monarch founder William Munroe sat in a meet­ing to­geth­er “where we spoke about one day it will come that this mod­el will no longer be sus­tain­able.”

He said they dis­cussed ideas about what the pos­si­bil­i­ties could be.

But amid the cur­rent pub­lic dis­course, Mon­tano was clear that peo­ple need to be hon­est about the de­cline of the show over the years.

“Peo­ple don’t know any­thing about So­ca Monarch, but as soon as Machel says One Show Car­ni­val Fri­day, the first thing is they will re­mem­ber So­ca Monarch, they just re­mem­ber it,” Mon­tano told Guardian Me­dia.

“They weren’t there, they didn’t go, and no­body cared that it was los­ing mon­ey. It’s not just los­ing mon­ey for the pro­mot­ers, which we should feel sor­ry for, it was los­ing mon­ey for the whole coun­try, tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars pay­ing for that.”

He said the ISM’s demise is some­thing that should not be tak­en light­ly.

“We don’t want to spend our mon­ey on loss­es. As a coun­try, we don’t want to sub­sidise things that don’t work be­cause one day it is go­ing to catch up to us.”

Mon­tano said for too long, many of the as­pects of cul­ture have been func­tion­ing on that lev­el, and gave the Di­manche Gras show as an ex­am­ple.

He ex­plained that the true en­er­gy of the ISM com­pe­ti­tion was the Pow­er So­ca genre but not­ed that he feels the genre was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a slump.

“... the re­al thing about Pow­er So­ca songs was when you had Bun­ji go­ing up against Machel, go­ing up against Fay Ann, go­ing up against De­stra, go­ing up against Iw­er, you had Blaxx com­ing around the cor­ner, some­times Su­perBlue...Now, if over those years you have Kees gone, Machel gone, Fay Ann gone, Bun­ji gone, De­stra gone, Iw­er gone, who will you have?”

Cit­ing this, Mon­tano al­so ques­tioned the pub­lic’s sug­ges­tion that youths would be sti­fled with­out the ISM.

“So­ca Monarch was nev­er a plat­form for the young artistes, it was a plat­form for the top artistes,” Mon­tano said.

In fact, he said it was be­cause the So­ca Monarch on­ly had young artistes that it could no longer sus­tain it­self.

As it re­lates to his new show, Mon­tano said it will ac­com­plish things that So­ca Monarch could not.

“One Show is about how could you have the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals with­out a Moth­er of all Shows, like a huge show,” he asked.

“So­ca Monarch will not do that on the Fri­day night, it hasn’t been do­ing that and the na­tion has ac­cept­ed that be­cause for the last five/six years, it have mul­ti­ple shows hap­pen­ing on that night. Peo­ple who used to go So­ca Monarch go­ing all-in­clu­sive fetes, they go­ing boat ride, they go­ing Duck Work, they go­ing here, they are go­ing there.”

He said in com­mem­o­ra­tion of his cel­e­brat­ing 40-plus years in the busi­ness, he want­ed to do a show on a day which had the biggest Car­ni­val au­di­ence, as peo­ple would usu­al­ly come in­to the coun­try clos­er to the week­end be­fore Car­ni­val.

He said Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day is Panora­ma and the Sun­day is Di­manche Gras and when he and his team looked at it, they felt So­ca Monarch “was in a re­tool­ing stage,” hence the de­ci­sion to sched­ule his con­cert then.