This is an edited version of a paper I presented at a conference a year ago. I did some tweaking as a result of comments I have been reading on a FB group I am a part of. In this piece I try to show how important Montano has been to Soca as well as why he is more than a performer and is really a channeller of the ESSENCE or ENERGY that dominates Carnival. It's a bit long and has many cultural and historical references. Your feedback is appreciated.
Blurring Boundaries: Machel Montano’s Soca Agenda
My fascination with my topic began at age sixteen. I was standing in Port of Spain watching bands make their way down Independence Square and a music truck housing Machel Montano and his band XTATIK was coming towards me. I don't remember the song he was singing. But I remember the experience of following his truck, like a lemming almost, swept up in the euphoria he created as he sang, pranced about the truck and gyrated to the crowd’s total enjoyment. I have followed his career faithfully since then, as have many others, and I have noted with interest the impact Montano has had on Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival. When he opted out of live performances this year many fans were disappointed. It was a lively topic of discussion rife with both debate and speculation. The general conclusion though, was that he was greatly missed, and Carnival 2010 lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. It got me to thinking about how much Montano has come to both represent and channel the spirit of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, because he wasn’t the only artist missing from the Carnival this season. Destra Garcia and Iwer George had sat it out as well, but their absences caused less of a ripple. Despite his physical absence, his music still dominated Carnival this year as many as 10 tracks from the album 34 was released and received regular airplay. In the weeks leading up to Carnival he was still one of the top three contenders for the Road March title and eventually placed third in the competition.
In thinking about Montano’s essence and its effect on Carnival , my focus shifted from orthodox areas of study like transnationalism to something a little more esoteric and indigenous. This paper will instead look at Montano’s body of work in the last 13 years, maps its key features and assess the impact he has had on soca music, link it to Carnival and perhaps figure out why he is so special to Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival.
In interrogating the phenomenon that is Montano's influence, and looking at its features, it became clear that mainstream theory would not be adequate for my purposes. Even though both post colonial and post modern theories could easily apply, I wanted to look at the essences that guide the festival that functions as Montano’s muse. While it is widely acknowledged that Carnival has its roots in both European and African traditions, we are more likely to hear about the European deities that reign over carnival in the form of Dionysus or Bacchus. More often than not Dionysus is referred to as the god of wine and festivities, according to myth, he is the god of rebirth; he is less well known for being the god that inspires ritual madness and ecstasy, the liberator of one’s normal self by madness, ecstasy or wine. Dionysus also has a relationship to the cult of the souls and is said to preside over communication between the living and the dead, past and present (Frazer, 1922).
If Dionysus is the European deity, it stands to reason then, that the co-relative deity from Africa is Esu. “Esu is the androgynous deity, the divine messenger, linguist and interpreter…the divine enforcer of the will of Oludumare, the Supreme being. In Yoruba philosophy, Esu emerges as a divine trickster, a disguise artist, a mischief maker, a rebel, a challenger of orthodoxy, a shape-shifter, and an enforcer deity (Aiyejina, 2009).” Funso Aiyejina’s 2008 professorial inaugural address and a later paper delivered in Nigeria in 2009, makes a coherent link between the god Esu and Earl Lovelace’s Bacchanal Aesthetics. Showing both how the deity has been demonized as well as how its essence presides over the spirit of Carnival through mischief making, inciting ecstasy, madness and euphoria, challenging orthodoxies and traditions and the evolution of forms and the varying dualities that are present in the festival.
Given the inherent similarities between the European and African deities, the features of Bacchanal Aesthetics provided a good framework against which to assess Montano’s impact on soca music in the last 13 years.
Creation and Evolution
The creation of Soca music is attributed to Garfield Blackman (first known as Lord Shorty and then in the 80s and 90s as Ras Shorty I), who developed a particular fusion of music that took its main elements from a merging of both African and Indian musical forms. Shorty I claims that his naming of the musical form came from the "so" of calypso and the "kah" from the first syllable in the Indian alphabet. His experimenting with this new form was in his words to serve two purposes. In an interview given in 1979 he says: "I was trying to find something because the talk was that calypso was dying and reggae was the thing...Everybody was putting it [calypso] down...Calypso was dying a natural death." Years later in 1997 he says to ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault that through the merging of the two musics he was attempting to fight "racialism". These two features, fighting to produce a relevant musical form and using music for integration would become dominant themes in Montano's career. While Blackman was creating soca music throughout the seventies with notable hits like "Indrani" and "Om Shanti" and the very significant album The Love Man. The new music received mixed reviews. Lord Shorty was criticized for the pre-dominance of Indian rhythms on his tracks, his dress code and lyrics were also critiqued as being too sexual. The song "Om Shanti" was considered to be controversial because it used a religious Hindu phrase for a music that was considered to be secular. It was felt that Lord Shorty was "playing Indian". In 1975 Lord Shorty changed some of his recording style, removed the Indian instruments such as the tabla and dholak drums that featured prominently on his albums and instead used western instruments imitating Indian rhythms. These changes seemed to be more palatable and acceptable to the listening audience. By Lord Shorty's account it was Cecil Hume, known in the performing world as Maestro who took up the new musical arrangements in 1976 with the song "Savage". In 1978 the success of Lord Kitchener's "Sugar Bum Bum" would seal the deal for Soca music, making its form a Carnival staple (Guilbault, 2007). Throughout the 80s and 90s Soca quickly captured audiences and a local and diasporic market. The music focused more on feelings, emotions and dancing whereas calypsos held their traditional territory of political and social commentary. The tents remained the space of calypsos while the fetes, discotheques and dancehalls became the venue for soca music. In the 80s artists like (Kelvin Pope) the Mighty Duke and Blue Boy (Austin Lyons) dominated soca with his Spiritual Baptist-influenced rhythms and melodies such as "Soca Baptist" (1980), “Rebecca” (1981), “Ethel”, and “Blue Fever” (1986). Soca, in the hands of artists like Blue Boy, Christopher Tambu Herbert and The Mighty Duke dominated the Road March competitions in the 80s and 90s. In the 1990's Lyon's image underwent a change and he emerged as Super Blue and again dominated the soca and road march arena winning the Road March titles in four successive years with "Get Something and Wave" (1991), "Jab Jab" (1992), "Bacchanal Time" (1993) and "Signal to Lara" (1994). In 1993 the Soca Monarch competition was launched, the first prize then was valued at TT$25,000. Super Blue became its first winner and would dominate the competition for several years (http://www.icerecords.com/Superblue.htm). His performances of Bachannal Time and Birthday Party appeared on the first worldwide broadcast of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival via CNN in 1993. Super Blue is the only calypsonian to have appeared on Sesame Street. Super Blue's presence from the 80s to late 90s would dominate soca music and he is credited with introducing the "jump and wave" style that is now such a popular feature of the music and the parties that play the music.
It is in the waning years of Super Blue's presence that Machel Montano and his band XTATIK would emerge and take up their positions in the driver's seat and from 1997 with the release of the album Heavy Duty to the present Machel Montano, in whatever incarnation of his stage persona, has dominated soca both locally and internationally.
It is important to note, that soca music, independent of whichever artist is dominating the scene, remains a controversial form for many reasons. Some critics claim that it is not calypso. Rather, it is an offshoot of this “more traditional” form. Researchers like Rohlehr have been able to establish that the calypso as we know it now, is a hybrid music with influences from both Africa and Europe. Soca, as Lord Shorty explains, appears to be a hybrid of a hybrid, merging a form that was Afro/Euro with Indo elements. In both A Scuffling of Islands and Calypso and Carnival in Pre-Independence Trinidad Rohlehr carefully maps the various controversies that surrounded the emerging calypso form from kalinda, to oracular to ballad. And it appears as if evolution, fluidity and change, more than anything else are the features of the form. However, there have always been arguments about essentialism and what are the features of a “true true” calypso, or classic calypso, as opposed to the features of soca. And while scholars still struggle to determine what the difference is between calypso and soca, a debate now rages on about what really constitutes soca: is it rhythm, tempo, musical arrangement, lyrical content. No one can define it, so everyone re-defines it. And since the form was developed as a response to the perceived death of another, if it too starts to wane, does it not require evolution to enable its rebirth?
The Boy Wonder
When Montano and XTATIK exploded onto the stage in 1997, in many senses it was a re-birth for the band because Montano was not new to the stage, public scrutiny or public dissent. From as early as 1986 he was making waves with his controversial performance with the Joker Des Vigne- penned, “Too Young to Soca?” that took him all the way to the prestigious Dimanche Gras show, where Montano, as the youngest performer to ever perform in the competition, clad in diapers and a bib, wowed the crowd with his confidence, insouciance and precociousness. Those features would remain trademarks throughout his career. His precociousness would later translate into an unabashed sexuality that came to be associated with both his music and stage performances.
By 1997 Montano, as either a solo artist or with his band, under either the names Pranasonic Express or XTATIK had released 13 albums that covered a range of genres from the period 1984 - 1996. The band and their lead singer played calypso, soca, soca parang, and rhythm and blues. Yet, despite the diversity of their repertoire they were still only relatively successful in the local music industry. Indeed, between 1984 to 1996 Montano and his band, despite their many albums had only a handful of hits and Machel was still known for his mostly for the 1986 calypso “Too Young to Soca” and his soca parang hit “Soca Santa”. By 1996, however albums like “By All Means” and “Men at Work” had begun to make inroads into the local consciousness, partly because of the music videos that accompanied songs, wherein Montano and XTATIK utilized wining marionettes that caused quite a stir, because of the mixture of innocence and profanity in the performances. The government housing projects at Maloney Gardens received its own 15 minutes of fame in the video for the “Men At Work “ album which featured Montano and his XTATIK frontline dressed in coveralls, hanging from a building, wining. Montano had begun to crossover in many ways. He was no longer catering to a calypso audience that for the most part was made up of a more mature crowd, and his style was shifting away from its calypso base and beginning to incorporate dancehall elements in both its sound and presentation.
Says Montano:
When we decided to form a band, we looked around at the bands that were existing and realized that we’re young and our band is not the same crowd as the calypso with the older heads. We would go to shows and there would be only old people around us…In 1997, I said, “look fellows, we need to do something new’…we decided we needed to come up with something new and to do it all on our own. (Guilbault, 2007)
Transformation
In an interview given in 2003 Montano says of himself and his band, “the most important thing we brought is the will to transform (Guilbault, 2007).” This statement would prove to be accurate in multiple ways. Much in the same way Lord Shorty and Blue Boy experimented with their look and sound from the 70s to the 90s, Montano, his band and the music would evolve at what seemed like warp speed between 1997 to the present.
The Pranasonic Express would eventually evolve into XTATIK and this band would have several incarnations changing members and names from XTATIK to XTATIK 5.0, the XTATIK Circus, the XTATIK Road Marching band and the Band Of D Year; it is currently known as the HD Family complete with back-up dancers. This evolution of names, according to Montano, was related to the band’s evolving sound.
There are several recurrent features in Montano’s and XTATIK’s work between 1997 and 2010. The body of work reveals motifs of overt sexuality, challenges to orthodoxy that are often seen in the theme of tradition and change, hybridization or mixing of musical forms and constant innovation and re-establishing of boundaries.
Tradition and Change
If calypso was seen as the staid artform that observed traditions, provided commentary and preserved the societies’ history, then soca was its anti-thesis. It was light, playful, sexual, lyrical content was not its focus; it turned its nose up at the notion of tradition and orthodoxy. Montano though seems to have made the effort to straddle two worlds with the musical offerings from his band. In making an effort to acknowledge traditions while moving the artform forward from 1997 to the present Machel has collaborated with calypso stalwarts such as Lord Melody, Lord Blakie, Lord Nelson, Calypso Rose, Shadow, The Black Stalin, David Rudder, Andre Tanker and The Mighty Sparrow. He has also collaborated with some of the most prominent names in chutney music creating hits with the likes of Drupatee Ramgoonai, Rikki Jai and Andy Singh. Part of Montano’s strategy has also been to sample the melodies of past calypso hits and he has done this with music from artists like Lord Kitchener, The Black Stalin, The Mighty Shadow and the Mighty Sparrow. Throughout the 13-year span that this paper tries to cover Montano has paid homage to Kitchener’s “Gimme D Ting” “Tay Lay Lay” (sung by Peter C Lewis) and “Sugar Bum Bum”, Sparrow’s “Congo Man”, Lord Nelson’s “We Like It”, Shadow’s “What Dey Say Dey Say” and “Poverty is Hell”, and The Black Stalin’s “Bun Dem” in the form of sampling or using the melody wholesale adding new lyrics and re-mixing it on a riddim. These are just the ones that I have been able to recognize. In some instances Montano has sampled calypsos of yesteryear for only a few bars of a song and that has made identification somewhat more difficult. The ones I have listed here, reflect more overt use.
Montano’s use of what we would call classic calypsos, as well as his collaborating with the older generation of calypsonians has done two things. Created a trend among other soca artists of his generation such as Bunji Garlin, KMC, Fay-Ann Lyons and Shurwayne Winchester who have all apparently followed in Montano’s footsteps – and I say this because their collaborative acts came years after Montano had begun doing his – and done collaborations of their own. Garlin has done collaborations with Explainer on his 80s hit “Loren”, he reprised Maestro’s “Fiery” to win the 2008 Soca Monarch competition and circa 2001 collaborated with former Calypso Monarch Singing Sandra on the song “Lies”. Shurwayne Winchester has collaborated with Calypso Rose in her reprise of “Tempo” and KMC as recently as Carnival 2010 teamed up with Ronnie McIntosh. These collaborations have also breathed new life into the careers of older artists, providing them with a younger audience, from the re-mixes, as well as exposing the younger audience to calypsos and soca music of yesteryear. Interestingly enough, none of these artists have yet to collaborate with Super Blue – an artiste who dominated the scene for the better part of two decades.
Since the word sampling has come up. While Montano may not be the first soca artist to have sampled music - Lord Nelson’s “Disco Daddy” back in the 70s, which made use of the Shaft television series theme song, is evidence of this – his use of music samples has certainly surpassed that of any other soca artist of his generation. In many instances one song can have multiple melody samples on them overlapping each other. What made Montano’s sampling such a hit was the choices he made early in his career. Montano chose melodies that hark back to the childhood of his major listening audience. Fans were able to hear samples of nursery rhymes, popular church choruses, pop songs, dancehall tunes, even songs from the children’s television programme Sesame Street. With most of his focus being on fun playful lyrics and catchy beats Montano tapped into the subliminal feel good memories that these melodies evoked and while the older heads shook in disapproval, ticket sales for the venues he performed at soared. In 1997 Heavy Duty sampled as few as three songs – Kitchener’s “Gimme De Ting”, Shadow’s “What Dey Say Dey Say” and the nursery rhyme “Old Mac Donald Had A Farm”. Given the huge success and overwhelming popularity of “Music Farm’s” technique –a combination of sampling and multiple artists singing different verses, a novel practice then in the calypso and soca world - Montano’s use of sampling only increased and every album featured popular melodies, some instantly recognizable, others, not so much.
In the last 13 years his sampling has spanned music from the disco era, rhythm and blues, rock and pop. Machel has used songs like the hymn “Stand Up and Tell Me”, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Thriller”, U2’s “With or Without You”, Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”, “Aap Jaisa Koi Mere” from the filmi hit Qurbani, Maxwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, Celia Cruz’s “La Vida Carnaval”, Shania Twain’s “Party For Two”, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”, Enya’s “Caribbean Blue” and Michelle Branche’s, “A Thousand Miles”. It is therefore no wonder that he is sometimes referred to as the Puff Daddy of Trinidad and Tobago.
Coupled with this sampling of various genres came the riding of riddims. I stand to be corrected, but the first example of it I picked up in his work is in his 2000 album where Montano rides the Y2K riddim on a remixed version of “Poverty is Hell” with Shadow. And this is a classic example of how Montano would play with various forms: he takes an old song, from one of the older more venerated artists, re-mixes it on a riddim and sings it with the artist. Riddims were nothing new to the music scene in Trinidad and Tobago, but it was for the most part isolated to dancehall. Afficionados of the Jamaican artform will already know of the tradition of several artists penning lyrics for and piggy backing on the same melody.
From 2000 onwards the riding of riddims as well as regional collaborations with dancehall and other artists became the norm in soca music - again, pioneered by Montano. The idea of multiple artists singing on a song was almost unheard of in calypso. I can think of no examples and prior to Montano’s experiments with it in 1997, there seems to be no evidence of it happening in soca music either. But from 1997 onwards collaborations between local and foreign artists quickly became a trend. So much so that a current way of judging the pedigree of a soca artist is by the number of collaborations he has done.
Between 2000 to the present Montano has rode the Takeover Riddim in 2005 (We Not Giving Up), Legendary Riddim in 2006 (Hot), the Tambourine Riddim in 2007 (One More Time), Temper Wine and Push Bumper Riddims in 2009 (Temper Wine and Push Bumper), and in 2010 the Bubble Up Riddim and Jumbie Gutter Riddim. And between 1997 to the present he has collaborated with the following regional artists: Shaggy, Beenie Man, Red Rat, Buccaneer, Spragga Benz, Tall Pree, Onyan and Wanskie of Burning Flames, El La Kru, Allison Hinds, Collie Budz, Mr Vegas, Vybz Kartel, Sizzla Kalonji, Macka Diamond (with Patrice Roberts from the HD Family), De Marco, Serani and Buju Banton. His collaborations with international artists is a shorter list, but not necessarily any less impressive. The list includes Minmi (Japan), members of the G-Unit, Wyclef Jean, Doug E Fresh, Lil Jon, Pitbull, Busta Rhymes, Casely and recently Janet Jackson.
This eclectic mix of genres, beats, riddims and remixes since 2003 have been showcased annually in his concert the Alternative Concept. Through his impressive showmanship Montano has re-established boundaries about live performances. By the early 90s as soca fetes became more popular with the younger audience, attendance waned at calypso tents and they began to struggle. Tents like the Spektakular Forum toyed with various formulas, shortening the social and political commentary sets and introducing soca artists to bring down the curtain on their nightly shows. But this experimentation has been to no real avail. Many tents have since closed while more and more fetes are launched each year, with soca artistes demanding top dollar to perform. The format of a typical fete features dee jay music until about midnight and then between midnight, and the show’s close off time, usually 4 am, there will be a series of live acts performing their songs. While these performances tend to be high energy and filled with antics that normally show case the artist’s wining skills or the wining skills of a member of the audience there was not much variation in the format of the performances – until the Alternative Concept.
The Alternative Concept Concerts were introduced about a year into Montano’s evolution to concept albums around 2002. These albums followed a particular format or theme: marching bands, circuses, angels, magical drums. There were songs that developed the theme in the album, along with collaborations with various foreign artists and remixes of these songs. Each album also featured at least one song from the year before, but always re-mixed. Some of the albums also featured a repeat performance by an artist from the previous year as well. The concerts were exactly what they billed themselves as, concerts, and not a mere fete. Audiences were treated to well choreographed performances that featured dancers, guest acts, surprise acts and circus-like tricks. Past shows have featured marching bands, Montano allegedly parachuting into the performance venue, Wyclef Jean arriving onstage on a white motorcycle, Montano exploding out of a drum, and of course live performances with Montano and his various foreign acts. The Alternative Concept performances are also staged in New York and London annually and gives Montano the perfect space to showcase his music and specific performance style.
Montano’s constant boundary pushing has of course earned him numerous critics. He has been accused of being too sexual, of inciting violence in fetes from as early as 1998 with “Toro Toro” and “Footsteps”, of not actually singing soca music and of lacking originality with his productions. He has taken on his critics in several songs, actually showing that despite soca’s reputation for being light, he can use the form to protest. From as early as “Winer Boi”(1997) and “What Dey Say Dey Say” (1997), to more recent hits like “Carnival”(2003), “We Not Giving Up”(2005), and “Madder Than Dat” (2005) Montano takes on his critics saying:
Call: Machel, why you wining so?
Response: That’s because I am a good winer man
Call: Tell me why you wining so?
Response: This is what I tell them
Just because I could wine
Try pull me down
Like me hang on clothes line
But me get like Tarzan
And swing pon a vine
Anytime me fall below the line
Me bounce back and me come one time…
I going to make them critics cry
I going to wine ‘til they day I die.
In “We Song (Ba Dang) he defends his musical choices by saying his sound is rougher,as in better and more cutting edge, than the other artists around him. It is this choice to be cutting edge and to take chances in the face of perceived rules and censorship that has sustained him in the music business because each year his fans anticipate him upping the ante, and thus far Montano has not failed.
So what does any of this have to do with Esu?
Montano has become an influential artist in a festival that has many resonances in Trinidad and Tobago. For some, Carnival is a secular festival, while for others it has ritualistic importance, and as all know, ritual is an important part of religion. All religious rituals have a presiding deity that is venerated. Esu, is one of those deities whose essence is manifested throughout the carnival period, not just through music, but through many other practices of the season. Esu is the god of indeterminacy, chance and revolts, Montano has manifested all of these qualities in the choices he has made in his musical career. Femis Osofisan says:
If a knowledge needs to be carried forward, something must come and disturb the present stability. It is when the present stability is disturbed that we then move forward again, else we stagnate, and die. …Revolts must come in order to have progress, which is why questioning must continue. That’s the principle that Eshu represents, constant questioning, constant challenge to authority, to orthodoxy. The restless iconoclastic spirit (Osofisan, Excursions in Drama and Literature, pp80-81).
We are still in the process of judging the long term impact that Montano’s experimentations and challenges to orthodox calypso and soca forms have had. And while his critics grapple with the implications of what he has done with soca music, he continues to do more. He has relocated to the music scene in Los Angeles now, and has renewed his attack on the cross-over market, as seen with his 2010 collaborations, and yet again questions are being raised about what is soca music and is Montano producing soca, improving the art form or watering it down for an international audience. Of course, in answering many of these questions, our first step might be in deciding if soca music, like Machel Montano, can be constrained within boundaries and defined.
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