PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Vin­cent­ian so­ca artiste, Gamal “Skin­ny Fab­u­lous” Doyle helped bro­ker peace be­tween Machel Mon­tano and Iw­er George, fol­low­ing a sea­son of rift in song last year.

Mon­tano, dur­ing his per­for­mance at One Fete at the Queen’s Park Oval, con­firmed that Fab­u­lous urged the two so­ca stars to rec­on­cile af­ter there mu­si­cal spat last year.

The rev­e­la­tion was made dur­ing the per­for­mance of Conch Shell, the re­cent­ly re­leased col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Mon­tano, George and Fab­u­lous. It was the sec­ond time in the day that they had ap­peared on stage to do the song af­ter the trio per­formed to­geth­er at sun­rise dur­ing the Xpe­ri­ence Fete at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um car park ear­li­er on Sat­ur­day.

Fab­u­lous, re­al name Gamal Doyle had been a cen­tral fig­ure in their spat last year as he had writ­ten the lyrics to “Dr Mashup”, the song Mon­tano record­ed in re­sponse to Iw­er’s Road March Bac­cha­nal 2018 which sug­gest­ed George was robbed of the Road March ti­tle in 2018.

“This is not pre­tend. This is re­al men, be­ing re­al men,” said Mon­tano as he placed his hands on the shoul­der of George.

“Big up the St Vin­cent flag in the front. Make some noise for Skin­ny Fab­u­lous. Last year he say Machel, we need to bring the fam­i­ly to­geth­er,” he said, “So we was fam­i­ly but a lit­tle broth­er had to get mashup. George, you is a lit­tle broth­er.”

“Yuh know I love yuh,” said Iw­er in re­sponse.

“And I love you too. From back in the days, long time. We bury­ing the hatch­et here right now,” said Mon­tano

Mon­tano then gave way to George, sup­port­ing him as he per­formed his hits “Car­ni­val Come Back Again”, “Let Me See Yuh Hand” and “Come to Meh”.

Mon­tano al­so took time to clar­i­fy his an­nounce­ment con­cern­ing this year’s Machel Mon­day be­ing the last, re­fut­ing spec­u­la­tion that he was al­so go­ing to quit mu­sic en­tire­ly.

“Some­body call me the oth­er day and tell me I hear yuh gonna stop singing. I don’t un­der­stand, I ever say that? What did I say? The last Machel Mon­day,” said Mon­tano who al­so im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed to one au­di­ence mem­ber’s as­ser­tion that the con­cert will be back next year by re­fer­ring to so­cial me­dia joke about the In­di­an Ex­po.

Ear­li­er in the night Swap­pi al­so gave way to an­oth­er vet­er­an, bring­ing out the Baron dur­ing his per­for­mance at One Fete, al­low­ing the crowd to hear the clas­sic croon­er belt out the orig­i­nal “Feel­ing It” which Swap­pi re­made, and oth­er hits from his reper­toire.

Voice fol­lowed Swap­pi, who en­tranced the au­di­ence with a so­lo per­for­mance of the run­away hit Dear Pro­mot­er and sev­er­al of his oth­er songs be­fore in­tro­duc­ing his “Dear Pro­mot­er” col­lab­o­ra­tor Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller to close his set with the song.

Kees then kept the au­di­ence cap­ti­vat­ed with his oth­er run­away hit Boss La­dy, fol­lowed by se­ries of his oth­er hits old and new, al­though rain threat­ened to pull the crowd away from the stage dur­ing his per­for­mance.

One Fete had re­turned af­ter a six-year ab­sence from the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar and had drawn a sol­id crowd.