Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and Road March King, Machel Mon­tano is cur­rent­ly in In­dia af­ter re­cov­er­ing from the Trinidad Car­ni­val sea­son. How­ev­er the mu­sic-lov­ing “Monk” made sure to is­sue a list of thank yous across the in­dus­try this week, salut­ing all con­trib­u­tors, col­lab­o­ra­tors, sup­port­ers and fans.

Mon­tano com­plet­ed his Mas­ters in Car­ni­val Stud­ies and al­so claimed the Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle in 2024, dur­ing a two-year hia­tus from the Car­ni­val cir­cuit. Re­turn­ing to the Car­ni­val scene this past sea­son, the mas­ter of Caribbean mu­si­col­o­gy man­aged his wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and dy­nam­ic stage pres­ence across a se­lect few events of­fi­cial­ly, while al­so mak­ing sur­prise guest ap­pear­ances at ma­jor events on the fete cal­en­dar.

“To my in­cred­i­ble fans, my ded­i­cat­ed team, and the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go—THANK YOU!” said Mon­tano in his of­fi­cial me­dia re­lease.

“This Car­ni­val sea­son was noth­ing short of mag­i­cal, and it’s all be­cause of you. The en­er­gy, the love, the pas­sion—every­thing we built to­geth­er made 2025 a sea­son to re­mem­ber. My song, ‘PARDY’ was more than just mu­sic; it was a cel­e­bra­tion of the hard work, sac­ri­fice, and joy that de­fines our cul­ture. And af­ter all that ef­fort, we ALL de­served a mag­i­cal PARDY on the road Mon­day and Tues­day! Big Love to my Peo­ple.”

Mon­tano ac­knowl­edged some of the “key play­ers who helped make this sea­son leg­endary”, in­clud­ing his wife, chil­dren, par­ents and ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly.

It al­so in­cludes his man­age­ment team and the cre­ative team be­hind his 11th Road March win for PARDY, name­ly Mevon “Xplic­it­Mevon” Sood­een, An­dre Jef­fers, Bad­john Re­pub­lic, 1st Klase, Kyle Pe­ters, Karyce Phillips, Kendel Hayes, Ter­ri Lyons and Pre­ci­sion Pro­duc­tions, as well as all pro­duc­ers who did Road Mix­es —Mad­ness MUV, D Nin­ja, DJ Mar­cus Williams, DJ Op­ti­mus, Pre­ci­sion Pro­duc­tions, DJ Kai, Da­da & Mar­fan.

Elat­ed over his Chut­ney So­ca Monarch col­lab­o­ra­tion and vic­to­ry, Mon­tano salut­ed “the bril­liant minds be­hind the song, Pep­per Vine, name­ly: Dru­patee and Kr­ish­na Per­sad-Ma­haraj, La­dy La­va, Pri­vate Ryan, Jus Now, M1 and Mela Caribe, stat­ing:

“Thank you for mak­ing his­to­ry with me! And huge shoutouts to every­one who helped pro­duce, build and per­form with us at Skin­ner Park! Much love and sin­cer­est thanks goes out to all fans and sup­port­ers who showed up, sang your hearts out, and brought the en­er­gy to every sin­gle event. None of this is pos­si­ble with­out you!”

Mak­ing spe­cial note of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, Mon­tano al­so thanked the steel or­ches­tras who played his Bet Meh sin­gle in their ef­forts to claim the Panora­ma ti­tle.

“To the Siparia Del­tones, bp Rene­gades and Massy Trinidad All Stars—thank you for trust­ing ‘Bet Meh’ with your Panora­ma Ti­tle as­pi­ra­tions; it was an ho­n­our to be there on stage at Semis with you. Big up to De Red Boyz and Ja­son “Shaft” Bish­op, for a mas­ter­ful com­po­si­tion, which was al­so rep­re­sent­ed in my per­for­mance for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals! Thank you to every­one who con­tributed to the pre­sen­ta­tion at Di­manche Gras—the team, the set de­sign­ers, the pro­duc­ers, and the per­form­ers!”

Mon­tano re­leased his lat­est al­bum on Feb­ru­ary 25. One De­gree Hot­ter fea­tures his re­cent hit sin­gles.

For their con­tri­bu­tions to this ac­com­plish­ment, Mon­tano thanked all his col­lab­o­ra­tors, writ­ers, pro­duc­ers, en­gi­neers and DJs, in­clud­ing Pumpa, Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Full Blown, Dru­patee, La­dy La­va, Davi­do, Ayet­ian, Ne-Yo and DJ MAC. Mon­tano then moved on to his Cor­po­rate Part­ners and Spon­sors, stat­ing:

“Noth­ing great hap­pens alone,” he said, “so I want to send love to the part­ners who stood be­side me this sea­son: Caribbean Air­lines, Blue Wa­ters, Sta­mi­na En­er­gy, Courts and the Bar­ba­dos Tourism Mar­ket­ing Inc —your sup­port helped fu­el some in­cred­i­ble mo­ments. Big re­spect to my TRIBE Car­ni­val famalay for an amaz­ing 2 days on the road ...

“A huge shout out to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, Pan Trin­ba­go, TU­CO, NCC and The Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) for pro­duc­ing a fan­tas­tic Car­ni­val,” he added.

The ex­ten­sive list of thank yous and com­men­da­tions con­tin­ued with Mon­tano list­ing “all of the per­for­mances and per­son­al­i­ties that made his Car­ni­val 2025 so epic” along with all of the mem­o­rable and vi­ral mo­ments.

Look­ing for­ward to the rest of 2025, Mon­tano high­light­ed his up­com­ing doc­u­men­tary, Like Ah Boss: Jour­ney of a So­ca King - Machel Mon­tano, which will ex­plore his jour­ney and life in so­ca mu­sic.

Al­so in the pipeline will be a com­pi­la­tion from his Monk Mu­sic la­bel dubbed So­ca Uni­verse 2025, which should have all the hits of Car­ni­val 2025.

Of note is The Sound­bridge Pro­gramme cur­ricu­lum roll­out and of course, Mon­tano’s One De­gree Hot­ter in­ter­na­tion­al tour dates.

With two more ti­tles added to his belt, Mon­tano’s ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, glob­al mu­sic in­dus­try net­work and myr­i­ad of re­la­tion­ships en­ables him to ac­com­plish more, even while seem­ing­ly do­ing less at age 50.

His life­long quest to share and es­tab­lish the mu­sic and cul­ture of T&T and the wider Caribbean in the main­stream and through­out the world con­tin­ues to soar to high­er heights, inch­ing clos­er and clos­er to its ul­ti­mate ac­com­plish­ment and recog­ni­tion.