Machel Montano’s Soca Legacy Takes Centre Stage at Brooklyn Public Library

The story of one of the Caribbean’s most influential performers is being told in Brooklyn through a new exhibition tracing Machel Montano’s journey from a young Trinidad and Tobago performer to an international ambassador for soca music.

Brooklyn Public Library has opened “Journey of a Soca King: The Exhibition” at its Central Library, bringing together memorabilia, music and defining moments from Montano’s decades-long career.

Created by the Machel Montano Foundation for Greatness, the exhibition explores not only Montano’s musical achievements but also his relationship with Brooklyn, a borough that played an important role in his development as a young artist.

From Trinidad and Tobago to the World

Montano began performing as a child and released Too Young To Soca in 1985. Over the decades that followed, he became one of the most recognisable figures in Caribbean music, helping introduce soca to increasingly diverse audiences through international performances, collaborations and recordings.

The Brooklyn exhibition gives visitors a closer look at that evolution through a collection of costumes, trophies, vinyl records and other material from his career.

Visitors can also listen to selections from Montano’s catalogue at the Central Library’s vinyl listening station and view footage documenting significant moments from his life and work.

The exhibition arrives in the same year as the documentary Like Ah Boss: Journey of a Soca King, which revisits Montano’s career, including his intense 2015 Trinidad and Tobago Carnival season. The film is scheduled to be projected on the façade of Brooklyn’s Central Library on September 3.

Brooklyn’s Role in the Soca Star’s Story

While Montano’s identity and music remain firmly connected to Trinidad and Tobago, his relationship with Brooklyn stretches back to childhood.

In 1984, when he was nine years old, Montano travelled to Brooklyn after receiving a scholarship to participate in Marie Brooks’ summer programme. The workshops he attended during that period became part of his early artistic development.

He would later perform at Madison Square Garden alongside legendary Caribbean performers including the Mighty Sparrow, Mighty Shadow and Lord Kitchener.

His connection with Brooklyn continued into adulthood. During the mid-1990s, Montano lived on Utica Avenue, and his landmark road march hit “Big Truck” was recorded in Brooklyn.

For Montano, bringing his personal archive back to the borough carries particular significance. He described Brooklyn as a place that helped shape him, pointing to the communities, experiences and early audiences he encountered there.

He also expressed hope that young visitors will see the exhibition as evidence that Caribbean culture, including art created on a small island, can command recognition on a global stage.

Celebrating Brooklyn’s Caribbean Diaspora

The exhibition extends beyond Montano’s individual accomplishments to explore the broader relationship between Caribbean culture and Brooklyn.

The borough is home to one of the largest Caribbean diaspora communities outside the region, with generations of Caribbean migrants influencing its music, cuisine, literature, business, politics and arts.

Brooklyn Public Library President and CEO Linda E. Johnson said the institution is committed to documenting and sharing the histories and cultural contributions of the communities it serves.

Montano’s career provides a particularly fitting lens through which to tell that story. His rise mirrors themes familiar throughout the Caribbean diaspora, including migration, cultural preservation, entrepreneurship and the challenge of taking distinctly Caribbean art forms into international spaces.

Programming connected to the exhibition will also extend into Brooklyn neighbourhoods with strong Caribbean communities. Library branches including Clarendon, Rugby, Crown Heights, Flatbush and Brower Park are expected to host readings, workshops, arts and crafts activities and other cultural programming for children and adults.

More Than Four Decades of Soca

Montano’s achievements have made him one of the defining figures in the history of soca.

His career includes a record 12 Trinidad and Tobago Road March titles, as well as victories as National Calypso Monarch and Chutney Soca Monarch. He has also received Trinidad and Tobago’s Hummingbird Medal Gold.

Beyond awards and Carnival stages, his work has contributed to soca’s movement beyond its traditional Caribbean base and into international markets, while maintaining a strong connection to Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural identity.

That legacy is also being preserved through the Machel Montano Foundation for Greatness, founded by Montano and co-led by his mother, Elizabeth Montano.

The organisation supports initiatives spanning education, mentorship, emerging soca artists, youth sport, health programmes and economic development. Its work has also extended to rural cocoa-producing communities, providing resources and support designed to help growers develop their own chocolate products and businesses.

The foundation serves as custodian of Montano’s personal archive. In 2024, that collection was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register for Latin America and the Caribbean, and material from the archive now forms part of the Brooklyn exhibition.

A Caribbean Story in a Global City

“Journey of a Soca King” joins a history of major cultural exhibitions presented by Brooklyn Public Library, including projects examining figures such as James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as the widely recognised Book of HOV exhibition.

For Caribbean audiences, however, Montano’s exhibition carries another significance.

It places soca and the history, creativity and people behind it — inside a major New York cultural institution at the heart of one of the Caribbean diaspora’s most important communities.

Montano’s career may have started on a small Caribbean island, but the exhibition in Brooklyn tells the story of just how far that sound has travelled.