Soca Kingdom rules the road

WHEN two kings are in the kingdom you expect results.

This was the view of Liz Montano on her son Machel and SuperBlue (Austin Lyons) winning Road March this year with the collaboration Soca Kingdom.

“(Their collaboration) was very positive and I think SuperBlue added a lot by giving Machel some of his wisdom. You could see with them working on the song that was an important part to Machel,” she told Newsday in an interview yesterday.

Soca Kingdom was played 336 times compared to 140 for Iwer George’s Savannah and followed by Patrice Roberts’ Sweet Fuh Days with 112. Montano said the win was well deserved and added that Iwer and Patrice did well too.

“This year it was beautiful that the masqueraders had a lot of music to cross the stage with instead of one song all the time.” She said her son was out of the country and up the islands.

Machel in an Instagram post of the Road March results simply wrote number nine and “Thank you T&T.” He is now a nine-time Road March winner and has surpassed Sparrow (Dr Slinger Francisco) who has eight wins.

SuperBlue is now a ten-time Road March winner with this collaboration and he is tied with the grandmaster Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts).

SuperBlue told Newsday yesterday his collaboration with Machel was no accident.

“All accidents are not fatal,” he said. “There can be happy accidents. This was last minute – they called me in, they run it, they liked it.”

He could not say whether there would be another collaboration with Machel, but thanked the many people who stood by him.

And despite the runaway victory of Soca Kingdom, young producer Travis Hosein, known as Travis World, remains humbled. Hosein, 22, said from the time he created the song , he knew it was a winner.

“I had confidence in the song that it could win, but I still wasn’t calling it until it happened a short while ago,” he said. “I am happy, just very happy,” adding “I still normal, not over excited.”

Hosein said he has been receiving a lot of calls since the song came out and now that it has been declared a winner, the calls have increased. He has plans to work with some of the big name artistes including Destra and Bunji Garlin.

With additional reporting

by Carol Matroo and

Vashtee Achibar