MACHEL MONTANO is a national treasure of Trinidad and Tobago and a Caribbean icon. It’s about cultural collaboration – from chutney, to zouk, to American R&B in the form of Ashanti, to Indian spirituality in the form of Sadhguru.
It’s about helping to bring in talent from other parts of the Caribbean – an influence and a hand up. The regional fam he’s helping to grow is bigger than Skinny Fabulous. He has collaborated with Problem Child, Vincentian, who is the most exciting and creatively dancing soca artist in the region today. Monk’s work with Alison Hinds long predates this. He is revered in the soca universe and is receiving overdue recognition on the wider global music scene.
Machel is about honoring and loving the people who came before him, like Calypso Rose. Of course he would do a duet with the chutney queen Drupatee Ramgoonai. His restless genius has given us a film, Bazodee. He is T&T’s best and most influential ambassador of any kind, diplomatic or cultural.
He returns and pays his dues. He never deceives the fans. If it’s his 2am set and a show is bogged down with long set-up times between acts, Monk banishes any thoughts of sleep (I’m talking about myself) and gives everyone their full credit.
He doesn’t have to perform at someone else’s T&T show if he doesn’t want to. The Double M brand has become a fraud. Machel Monday was one of the hottest tickets in the carnival season. It surpassed International Soca Monarch in organization, pizazz and quality.
We love him, in part because he seems to have been with us forever. The boyish high notes that were too young for him have given way to his distinctive drawl and gray-bearded eminence. His appearance last Saturday at Fete with the Saints made the event more than worth the expensive cost of admission.
So with all due respect I say the great man made a misstep when he and his management team decided to stage his 40th anniversary One Show on Carnival Friday, February 17th. They should have known that parking Machel’s tank on the Good Friday lawns would kill ISM.
Organizers and the government offered other plausible reasons why ISM 2023 was eventually cancelled. The $3 million in “in-kind support” fell two-thirds short of the $10 million the organizers asked the government for, they said. Tourism, Culture and the Arts Minister Randall Mitchell correctly noted that the public has lost interest in ISM and said that private promoters should do more to generate their own operating income rather than depending on the state.
Mitchell is not wrong in principle, but the One Show is the elephant in the room. If things were bleak before, this ended any hope of a continuation of ISM 2023. Even in a healthier state, ISM would have been crushed by Brand Machel. Attendance was already marked. It is possible that some artists may have been caught between the competition and the larger stage of Machel.
The main argument in defense of what is effectively a reduction of Machel’s Monday to Carnival Friday was that ISM was dying anyway, so what’s the problem with letting Monk have his way and have the day? It is an extremely bad argument. If your loved one is dying, you don’t end it. You try to revive him and restore him to good health.
The venue would be more exercised if the Panorama finals were canceled for any reason. There seems to be a casual disregard for ISM. Sister events like Chutney Soca are going ahead. Family artists from the Caribbean expect and need ISM, an important showcase for them. However, the mother of the soca family will be missed.
Carnival season isn’t just about big artists and glitz. ISM is an important breakthrough event for up-and-comers. How many of those at the top – and who were hoping to be seen and heard this year – can be accommodated on the One Show?
Renowned artists like Iwer George have made it clear during the difficult years of ISM that they consider the competition a big and important job – and they can show love to him AND their brother Monk. No one who saw Blaxx (Dexter Stewart) bring the fire in 2016 will ever forget it. Less than a year after many people paid tribute to the life of the great iconoclast we lost last March, they are casually sharing an event that he loved and ignited.
ISM organizers and the Government did not find out last week that there was not enough money to stage it. They should start from the position that ISM is an integral part of the carnival cultural calendar and as indispensable as the other products of the carnival weekend. Start the hard work of planning now to try to re-imagine ISM as a popular and financially viable thing.
There is no other event on the carnival calendar where top soca artists can compete and win prizes in 2023. Its removal must not be allowed to happen again.
An important part of the equation is whether Brand MM will keep her word and the One Show will be a one-off. Honestly, I can’t see them resisting the temptation to come again for Shrove Friday. It’s the beginning of the culmination of the beautiful vibrations, noises and hums of the long, past weekend. It’s a special day. The day calls for complementarity, not destructive competition.
The author is a media consultant,
at oringordon.com
