Machel defends record Road March title drive amid criticism

Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­[email protected]

New­ly mint­ed 2026 Road March cham­pi­on Machel Mon­tano yes­ter­day de­fend­ed him­self against claims on so­cial me­dia that he was mov­ing from truck to truck on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day to un­fair­ly push his En­core for the ti­tle race.

Mon­tano re­fut­ed this as­ser­tion as un­nec­es­sary and a vi­o­la­tion of his very ethos.

“I am not a rule break­er! I have eleven Road March­es! I know the rules; I am not a rule-break­er!” he said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in TSTT’s Ex­ec­u­tive Box at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

Rather, he said it was his hard work on both days that gave him the edge over Aaron “Voice” St Louis and Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez, say­ing his many ap­pear­ances on Car­ni­val stages made the dif­fer­ence.

He said his cam­paign be­gan Car­ni­val Mon­day night with Tribe, with whom he has had a four-year long busi­ness arrange­ment that in­cludes his hav­ing sev­er­al brand­ed trucks with­in the band. Yet, he said he ac­tu­al­ly per­formed on the truck as­signed to DJ and mu­sic pro­duc­er Travis “Travis World” Ho­sein be­cause it was bet­ter suit­ed to per­for­mances.

“You could sing on any truck. We went to Travis World’s truck be­cause it had the fire and the flames, it had the nice top. It had more speak­ers on my truck, my truck is for peo­ple, his truck is for mu­sic. So I went on there and stayed on it just like I did in 2025, and then I came off of that truck and sat on my truck, and pur­pose­ly zip my mouth, and did not take any mi­cro­phone, be­cause I know the rules, you do not ap­pear on one stage mul­ti­ple times,” Mon­tano ex­plained.

He said his per­for­mances on Tues­day in­clud­ed sched­ul­ing his ap­pear­ances to make sure he max­imised vis­i­bil­i­ty in his En­core brand­ed T-shirts and rags with­out vi­o­lat­ing any rules. He said this meant some of his per­for­mances did not count to­wards Road March plays. He said this is why he crossed the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage with Harts and no one else. Mon­tano said while he did per­form with the A-Team band, it was on the Sa­van­nah track and did not count to­wards his Road March plays. Sim­i­lar­ly, his per­for­mance at Down­town Car­ni­val, in ful­fil­ment of a re­quest from Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, did not count be­cause the first song the band crossed to was Voice’s Cyah Be­have, so his per­for­mance on the sec­ond truck was ap­pre­ci­at­ed by fans, but not reg­is­tered by the tab­u­la­tors.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, of the sev­en trucks he sang on from Mon­day night in­to Tues­day, he said on­ly three of those per­for­mances were count­ed. Machel’s En­core was played 171 times while Voice’s Cyah Be­have was played 127 times across the judg­ing points on both days. Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Still a Road Man was played 91 times.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 37.0 of TU­CO’s Road March rules, the win­ner is de­ter­mined by the song reg­is­tered for the com­pe­ti­tion that is played the high­est to­tal num­ber of times, with­out rep­e­ti­tion, dur­ing the agreed pe­ri­od at all des­ig­nat­ed venues. The first song played when a band ap­pears at a judg­ing point is what is count­ed.

Mon­tano al­so ad­dressed the con­ver­sa­tion about his re­tire­ment, say­ing he was not do­ing so any­time soon. Rather, he said he will be shift­ing his fo­cus to carv­ing path­ways to po­si­tion so­ca be­fore glob­al au­di­ences. He said break­ing Ald­wyn “Lord Kitch­en­er” Roberts’ 50-year-old record isn’t some­thing that should be tak­en light­ly and should be recog­nised.

“This is a mo­ment in his­to­ry. Should be marked like Hasley Craw­ford win­ning a gold medal, or Keshorn Wal­cott win­ning a gold medal, or Bri­an Lara’s 375, Sobers,” he said. Be­fore jok­ing, “I hope I get a lit­tle house. A diplo­mat­ic pass­port like Skin­ny (Fab­u­lous). At least give me back my bus route pass.”

While he made his re­quests tongue-in-cheek, he did say artistes feel un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed and their achieve­ments of­ten go un­no­ticed, but still they per­sist be­cause they have their eyes on the prize.

“One day all yuh will see me with a Gram­my in our hands.”

Mon­tano al­so con­firmed that while his con­cert at the Fla­va Vil­lage on Car­ni­val Fri­day was free to pa­trons, he was paid for his per­for­mance. How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment was giv­en a cost that was less than a third of his nor­mal rate.

He al­so dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that he pur­pose­ful­ly sched­uled his con­cert to com­pete with Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Hard Fete, which was al­so held in the Sa­van­nah on Car­ni­val Fri­day. Mon­tano said the Fla­va date hap­pened be­cause he was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to fly to In­dia for a Sad­hgu­ru con­cert. But a team de­ci­sion to re­main in Trinidad to chase great­ness and a twelfth Road March meant his sched­ule opened, and that was the on­ly rea­son he per­formed at Fla­va on Car­ni­val Fri­day.

Mon­tano al­so an­nounced that he is part­ner­ing with TSTT to host an in­cu­ba­tor pro­gramme for so­ca pro­duc­ers. He said the lo­cal in­dus­try needs de­vel­op­ment, train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion about the his­to­ry of the art­form, adding his So­ca Bridge pro­gramme is to ad­dress that. No date was giv­en for the launch, but it is ex­pect­ed to be in a few weeks.