Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

So­ca star Machel Mon­tano made a tri­umphant re­turn to the 28th St Kitts Mu­sic Fes­ti­val stage last­Thurs­day night af­ter an ab­sence of over 10 years.

Com­ing on as the penul­ti­mate act, Mon­tano start­ed his set just be­fore 1 am with his mon­ster hit and 2026 road march song En­core. For the next hour, Mon­tano had the crowd eat­ing out of the palm of his hands as he sang his way through some of the biggest hits in his cat­a­logue. From Pardy to Show­time, Mon­tano gave a per­for­mance, re­mind­ing any one in St Kitts who dared to for­get just why he is called the King of So­ca.

And yet, the high­light of his set came al­most to the end when lo­cal so­ca star Bran­don joined Mon­tano on stage in what could ad­e­quate­ly be de­scribed as a full cir­cle mo­ment. When Bran­don and Mon­tano last shared a stage to­geth­er - Mon­tano was a so­ca artiste, and Bran­don ... his video­g­ra­ph­er. Now they shared the stage at Warn­er Park, Bas­seterre, as peers in the genre. The crowd loved it.

Not to be out­done, the San Juan youth Aaron “Voice” St Louis, brought up the rear, where he brought down the house with his 2026 road march con­tender Cyah Be­have. For a brief mo­ment in time, a rare phe­nom­e­non hap­pened in 2026 - bare­ly a cell­phone could be seen record­ing the show. In­stead, eu­phor­ic pa­trons let them­selves sim­ply ex­ist in the mo­ment, singing along word for word, vib­ing with Voicey.

The two trin­bag­o­ni­ans and re­gion­al artistes such as V’ghn and Ed­win Year­wood & Kros­fyah helped to pow­er day one in­to the record books as one of the biggest open­ing nights for the fes­ti­val in its 30-year his­to­ry. Ac­cord­ing to St Kitts Tourism Min­istry per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Tivan­na Whar­ton, the team has been tweak­ing the line­up over the years and de­liv­ered re­sults this year, with over 7,000 pa­trons show­ing up on Thurs­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Whar­ton, the fes­ti­val gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly EC$14 to $15 mil­lion in di­rect eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty last year. Giv­en its con­tin­ued suc­cess, it’s no sur­prise that plan­ning has al­ready be­gun for next year. In the mean­time, Mon­tano be­lieves T&T could learn a thing or two from St Kitts.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter his per­for­mance, Mon­tano said it means go­ing be­yond so­ca and wel­com­ing artistes from all over the world.

He said, “We can learn from how the dif­fer­ent cul­tures rep­re­sent them­selves and bring that vibe to Trinidad. I think it’s all about in­creas­ing the ap­peal of the mu­sic. In­creas­ing the range.

“Every­body that’s been here comes to Trinidad at some point. But I think we could al­so think about a large fes­ti­val. We had an at­tempt in To­ba­go for the To­ba­go Jazz. And I think we could head back in that di­rec­tion. Un­der­stand it’s about book­ing ma­jor world acts along­side lo­cal and re­gion­al tal­ent.”