Al­though he has pro­mot­ed his 40th-an­niver­sary con­cert on Car­ni­val Fri­day, One Show—The Meet­ing Place, as a “one show on­ly” event, so­ca mega-star Machel Mon­tano has hint­ed that fans may be treat­ed to “a few show-lets” and “show-ups” dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. 

Mon­tano spoke with CNC3’s De Par­ty Start co-host Gyasi Mer­rique fol­low­ing a guest ap­pear­ance along­side so­ca di­vas De­stra Gar­cia and Patrice Roberts at St Mary’s Col­lege’s all-in­clu­sive Fet­ing with the Saints—Jour­ney With­in on Sat­ur­day night. He al­so ex­plained why he had scrapped his pop­u­lar Machel Mon­day con­cert af­ter ten years, in favour of this new Car­ni­val Fri­day en­gage­ment.

Car­ni­val Fri­day, tra­di­tion­al­ly known as Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, co­in­cides with the So­ca Monarch fi­nal which has been can­celled for this year. 

On Thurs­day, Gar­cia and Mon­tano re­leased their 2023 col­lab­o­ra­tion ti­tled, Shake The Place, which marks the 20th an­niver­sary of their hit It’s Car­ni­val. The duo, who re­ferred to them­selves as each oth­er’s “so­ca hus­band and so­ca wife” re­vealed that they had made plans to guest ap­pear at the pop­u­lar all-in­clu­sive. Roberts was sub­se­quent­ly in­clud­ed to ac­com­pa­ny Machel in a ren­di­tion of their 2006 duet, Band of The Year. 

A patron enjoys the music at Fete With The Saints' on Saturday evening at the St Mary's College Grounds, Serpentine Road, Port-of-Spain.

DARREN RAMPERSAD

Al­so mak­ing a spe­cial ap­pear­ance at the CIC all-in­clu­sive was Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez), who wowed the crowd with his per­for­mance of his Road March con­tender, Hard Fete. As he was wind­ing down he told the crowd their re­ac­tion had made him change his mind about go­ing af­ter his sec­ond Road March ti­tle. 

“Up to ear­li­er tonight, I wasn’t go­ing to reg­is­ter this song for Road March at all be­cause they say the song has noth­ing about the stage in it be­cause the song has noth­ing about road in it, so I wasn’t go­ing to reg­is­ter it. But I see all yuh wake up and it put some­thing in my mind,” he said.

Then, in his trade­mark style, Bun­ji freestyled the song, chang­ing the lyrics to suit calls for “stage” and “road.” 

“I not cross­ing no weak stage, let me ex­plain my anal­o­gy. Any stage that I am cross­ing must be tough like the econ­o­my!” he chant­ed, send­ing the crowd in­to a fren­zy. 

Ear­ly so­cial me­dia re­ac­tions to Bun­ji’s an­nounce­ment were over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive.  

In 2019 Machel Mon­tano,  Skin­ny Fab­u­lous and Bun­ji Gar­lin shared the Road March crown with their mon­ster hit, Famalay.