Decades before he became a continent-crossing soca ambassador, Trinidad’s Machel Montano was putting in long nights across Brooklyn’s pulsating soca circuit of the late 1980s and ’90s. Inside former banquet halls and other spaces rented out for weekend calypso and soca revues, the music, food and camaraderie offered Caribbean expatriates a welcome taste of home. For Montano, those venues served as an invaluable training ground.
“I remember at Tilden Hall, I performed alongside the top performers in the game — Superblue, Iwer George, Ajala, Preacher — and they would say, ‘We not going on after Machel,’” Montano said in an interview last month at Lincoln Center, where he had just performed. “That was a unique schooling and a special energy that only New York could deliver.”
While Montano’s rise is inextricably linked to Trinidad’s Carnival, when competitions determine the pecking order of soca, reggae and calypso artists, his international career took root in New York, where, fittingly, he will make history as the first Caribbean entertainer honored with a retrospective at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch, “Journey of a Soca King,” which opens Saturday and runs to Sept. 12. The branch, which sits at the terminus of the annual West Indian Day Parade, sought to spotlight an element of the culture.
“Brooklyn is home to one of the largest Caribbean communities in the world, and we are delighted to shine a spotlight on this extraordinary artist — continuing our deep commitment to democratizing history, reflecting the voices and experiences of the communities we serve,” Linda E. Johnson, president and chief executive of the library, said in a statement.
The exhibition showcases memorabilia from Montano’s career stretching across five decades, meticulously compiled and maintained by Elizabeth Montano, his mother, former manager and biographer, known as Lady. She began assembling it in 1982 starting with a crown Machel won as a 6-year-old in his first scholastic calypso competition.
It features over 100 physical objects, including five previously unseen, hand-bound lyric books, and recording equipment that traces Montano’s transition from analog to digital recording. On view is the Fostex R8 eight-track reel-to-reel Montano used to produce his 1995 soca/house single “Come Dig It,” which landed him a contract with the Los Angeles indie label Delicious Vinyl.
The wealth of archival material would not have existed without Montano’s family. Lady and Winston (Monty) Montano, the singer’s parents, were teachers, but they believed their son’s talent would lead to a future onstage. “We researched and saw the importance of collecting and documenting these things,” Lady Montano said. “People said I was a hoarder, but they didn’t know that I was preserving a legacy.”
In the library’s main lobby, a large screen will continuously loop Montano’s music videos and performances. A second screen will offer a sampling of the Machel Montano Digital Archive, which includes concerts, Carnival competition performances, documentaries, photos and media clippings. Upstairs, an 85-foot 3-D screen will display virtual models of artifacts, such as the six-foot trophy he was awarded as Carnival’s 2024 Calypso Monarch, that were too large to transport from Trinidad. Visitors to the library can scan QR codes to learn more about individual items on their devices.
Taken together, the objects underscore the connection between Brooklyn’s Caribbean community and Machel’s ascent in soca, a spirited, fast-paced style derived from calypso that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. Carnival season in Trinidad can make or break careers. Hundreds of artists, from hopeful newcomers to decorated legends, release new music and perform across countless stages throughout the season. A single track can fuel bookings at the various fetes, concerts and competitions that pack the Carnival calendar as well as provide lucrative opportunities on the international Carnival circuit, and beyond.
Musical competitions abound, ranging from school contests to televised national tournaments, and securing the title of Calypso Monarch, International Soca Monarch or Road March — awarded to the song played most often as masquerade bands dance or rhythmically “chip” past judging stations — can turn an artist into a star.
Montano won his first national Carnival competition in 1984 at age 9, which landed him his first international performance at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, opening for the calypso icons The Mighty Sparrow, Shadow and Lord Kitchener. A photo taken after that concert, with the venerable trio holding the young singer aloft as if presenting the music’s future, can be seen in the exhibition and on the cover of Lady Montano’s book, “King of Soca.”
Two years later, Montano made an even greater impression challenging seasoned veterans in the Calypso Monarch battle with his song “Too Young To Soca.” In the finals, he performed wearing a custom-made white diaper with blue trim and a matching bib, included in the exhibit. It’s a favorite of Lady Montano’s, along with the pink matador traje de luces (“suit of lights”) adorned with tassels and gold embroidery worn by Machel in the video for his 1998 hit “Toro Toro” (featuring Shaggy).
Montano’s popularity exploded in recent years through high-profile collaborations with Ashanti, Davido, Pitbull, Ne-Yo, Wyclef Jean and the Trinidad-born rapper Nicki Minaj, as well as a feature alongside Ariana Grande on the remix of Major Lazer’s “All My Love.” Fueling his global rise was a steady stream of adrenaline-pumping Carnival anthems and electrifying live shows, yielding an unmatched record of titles including seven Soca Monarch wins, a Calypso Monarch crown, and a record 12 Road March victories, one of the highest honors in soca music.
His Road March streak began in 1997 with “Big Truck” — a track written, recorded and produced in Brooklyn. For a year, Montano and his band, Xtatik, lived on Utica Avenue, where they worked to modernize soca for their generation by accelerating its tempo and subtly fusing it with elements of dancehall, hip-hop and electronic music.
Montano secured his 12th Road March triumph earlier this year with “Encore,” a kinetic tune that matches Carnival’s euphoria, besting the record established by Lord Kitchener in 1976.
“I was a bit leery about trying to surpass Kitchener, the quintessential calypsonian,” Montano said. “But when you get that close to a milestone, you don’t turn back. You put everything you have into it.”
Over two headlining sets at Central Park’s SummerStage earlier this month, Montano performed “Encore,” but made sure to incorporate nods to his adopted home away from home. He fused the song with elements of Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down” and Frank Sinatra’s “Theme From New York, New York” — and flipped the climactic lyric to, “If I can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
Behind him, a large screen displayed a four-minute visual montage, combining archival footage of his New York performances over the decades, Brooklyn Caribbean landmarks and New York triumphs including the Knicks’ recent N.B.A. championship. “It felt like the right moment to tie everything together,” Montano said, “and highlight the significant synergy between myself and New York City.”
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