Trinidad and Tobago soca icon Machel Montano has been at the forefront of the music genre for decades, with a string of accolades from around the globe—not least one Calypso Monarch, six Soca Monarch, and 10 10 Road March titles, along with the Hummingbird Gold Medal and an honorary doctorate from UTT.
Machel opened up on his artistic evolution, passion for promoting soca, and his future plans during a one-on-one with Wired I was born and raised in southwestern Trinidad, Siparia.
At first, my origination in music was entirely coincidental because my older brother was the one who used to take guitar lessons when I was only seven years old. During this time, he used to ask for my assistance in strumming the guitar strings, or singing a song for him whilst he was playing the chords for it. Maybe you should try out singing lessons. I was just going along with it during the early stages of singing. However, my full interest had started in when I won my first calypso competition, and I realised I had a passion for music because I began liking the sounds being birthed from the record player back at home.
As someone who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, how did your cultural background influence your sound and identity as an artist? Well, I knew of other musical genres, but what I was being led to was calypso. Therefore, it was what became closest to me—I sang calypso more than anything else during my younger days.
I grew to realize that calypso was an art form that was loved by the elders, and that piqued my interest into finding out what was the younger sound, which I then learnt was soca. The downside of this is that a part of our culture, especially in the younger generation, had a tendency to like foreign music more than Caribbean music.
