Sama­ki Fe­li­cian 

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Ten-time Road March win­ner Machel Mon­tano has tak­en so­ca mu­sic one step fur­ther in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, af­ter be­com­ing the first so­ca artiste to per­form at the fa­mous­ly known NPR Tiny Desk Con­cert se­ries. 

With a fol­low­ing of over 10 mil­lion sub­scribers, the vi­brant 20-minute con­cert, which is up­loaded to YouTube, fea­tures in­ti­mate, stripped-back per­for­mances from mu­sic artistes from dif­fer­ent gen­res.

It is record­ed at the desk of host Bob Boilen (an Amer­i­can mu­si­cian and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty) and show­cas­es raw acoustic sounds and per­son­al sto­ry­telling.

Mon­tano’s Tiny Desk Con­cert was placed on YouTube yes­ter­day morn­ing and by the af­ter­noon, had 132,000 views and over 16,000 likes.

Mon­tano was ac­com­pa­nied by a dozen tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing renowned trum­peter Eti­enne Charles and made his­to­ry at the Wash­ing­ton, DC stu­dio show­cas­ing the con­ta­gious en­er­gy of so­ca mu­sic, cap­ti­vat­ing view­ers world­wide.

The reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch per­formed from his wide reper­toire of hit songs, belt­ing out One More Time, Dance with You, Fast Wine, Like Ah Boss, Famalay, and So­ca King­dom in front of a live au­di­ence, which he had mov­ing to the mu­sic and obey­ing his com­mand to “take a jump.”

Some of the fans on hand even dis­played T&T flags and those from oth­er Caribbean is­lands.

Af­ter per­form­ing his 2007 hit One More Time, Mon­tano re­ferred to his coun­try in the video. 

“My name is Machel Mon­tano, I’m from Trinidad and To­ba­go, you know what the Caribbean says, it’s danc­ing time, all the time,” he said.

Mon­tano record­ed his his­tor­i­cal per­for­mance and the mo­ment on his In­sta­gram ac­count, where he ex­pressed his grat­i­tude for hav­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent T&T. 

“To­day we made his­to­ry. For the first time, so­ca mu­sic has graced the icon­ic NPR Tiny Desk stage and I am filled with grat­i­tude and an over­whelm­ing sense of pride, to rep­re­sent our cul­ture on this glob­al plat­form,” he said. 

Many who viewed Mon­tano’s Tiny Desk con­cert ap­peared to be al­so filled with pride or seemed to be en­thralled with his mu­sic, choos­ing to leave their thoughts un­der the video.

By yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, there were al­most 3,000 com­ments.

One view­er said, “This is my first time be­ing ex­posed to this artist (sic) and I’m not too fa­mil­iar with so­ca, but he’s a vibe. I will be check­ing out more of his mu­sic.”

An­oth­er said, “Fi­nal­ly a so­ca artiste!! And on­ly the biggest one ever!! Where my peo­ple!!! Trinidad!!”

An­oth­er added, “Trinidad stand up!!! I’m Ja­maican but my heart is so full!!”

Even those on the oth­er side of the hemi­sphere were im­pressed.

“I’m a Bangladeshi-Aus­tralian who fell in love with so­ca mu­sic four or five years ago af­ter watch­ing a Kes the Band con­cert. No oth­er mu­sic fills me up with joy the way this mu­sic does...”

Mon­tano start­ed his so­ca ca­reer when he was sev­en years old and by age 10, shared the stage with ca­lyp­son­ian icons like Mighty Spar­row, Lord Kitch­en­er, and the Mighty Shad­ow.