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Soca star Machel Montano landed a joint record 11th Road March title in Carnival 2025, as his song, Pardy, edged Ian ‘Bunji Garlin’ Alvarez to the prestigious title.
The Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation (TUCO) announced this afternoon that Pardy was the song of choice on the road with 267 plays to 253 for Bunji’s Carry It.
Bunji’s Thousands was third with 22 plays followed by Machel’s Bet Meh (15), Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez’s Road Meeting (11) and Yung Bredda’s The Greatest Bend Over (9).
Machel’s success pulls him level with Aldwyn ‘Lord Kitchener’ Roberts, who copped 11 titles between 1946 and 1976. Kitchener was 23-years-old when he was first crowned and 53 when Flag Woman won in 1976, although he continued to drop hits for another two decades.
In 1999, a year before his death, Nu Tones Steel Orchestra placed third in Panorama playing Kitchener’s Toco Band.
Incidentally, Kitchener’s first road success came in 1942 when his breakout song, Lai Fook Lee, was labelled Trinidad and Tobago’s unofficial road march. However, there was no Carnival that year due to World War II.
(Copyright TNT Island.)
Machel, who turned 50 last year, had not won the Road March crown since the coronavirus pandemic, with subsequent titles going to Kes Dieffenthaller and Iwer George in 2020 (Stage Gone Bad), Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons in 2023 (Hard Fete) and Mical Teja in 2024 (DNA).
In between, Machel picked up the Calypso Monarch crown in 2024 before snagging the Soca Chutney Monarch title earlier this year.
However, TUCO’s tabulators announced that the road belonged to Machel once more in Carnival 2025.
The 50-year-old soca star admitted that he was emotional about catching up to Kitchener. Machel’s first Road March crown came at the age of 24 with Big Truck in 1997.
He followed that up with Band of De Year (1997), Jumbie (2007), Advantage (2011), Pump Yuh Flag (2012), Ministry Of Road (2014), Like Ah Boss (2015), Waiting On The Stage (2016), Soca Kingdom (2018), and Famalay (2019).
Immediately behind Machel and Kitch are Austin ‘Super Blue’ Lyons and Slinger ‘The Mighty Sparrow’ Francisco who have 10 and eight Road March titles respectively.
Incidentally, the person with the longest hold on the Road March crown is not on that list.
Rafael de Leon, better known as ‘The Roaring Lion’, garnered a total of five Road March titles—excluding an unofficial win during World War II. However, he famously ruled the road for four straight years between 1935 and 1938.
Since then, Lord Kitchener (1963 – 65), Chris ‘Tambu’ Herbert (1988 – 90), Super Blue (1991 – 1993), and Machel (2014 – 16) are the only bards to come close after each managing three successive titles.
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Too many shared Road Marches and non-MM writing credits for this to be truly equivalent to Kitch.
Touche!