Missed Machel Montano this Carnival? The Happiest Man Alive takes his happy to a higher plane.
Soca superstar Machel Montano has spent the last seven months preparing for the Isha ShivRatri Festival in India. The Great Night of Shiva celebrations will be aired international through the Isha Foundation from 8 am Tuesday (Atlantic time) March 1, 2022.
Machel ‘jam session’ with Sadguru
This collaboration will see the self-dubbed Mr Fete perform for the largest audience of his super-star-studded life with the Isha Foundation, led by Sadhguru – the Indian businessman-turned Sage, born Jagadesh Vasudev, whose down-to-earth wit and inspired wisdom attracts a following of more than 25 million across his social media channels. From the trailer/promo, it promises to be an explosion of spiritual energy.
Machel’s instagram post teases on his ‘jam session with @sadhguru and @sounds_of_isha ??.’ It includes clips of what appears to be a rehearsal.
Legendary transcendental hybrid collaborations
The Isha Foundation’s Great Night of Shiva promises to transcend any of Machel’s electrifying performances to date.
The collaboration between the Caribbean’s greatest soca sensation and Sadhguru promises to equal or exceed such legendary crossover collaborations as that with Ravi Shankar and the Beatles of the 1960s which radically altered global pop music.
One of my favourites from this collaboration is the Beatles/George Harrison/RaviShankar ballad to Krishna, I am missing you.
Interconnected Ancient Eastern & Western Traditions
Machel Montano’s journey into Hinduism and its yogic traditions stem from his origins in the predominantly Hindu district of Siparia in South Trinidad. Hindu religion migrated with other Indian cultural traditions in the mass indentured immigrant labour movement that brought more than one million Indians to serve on British colonial estates in the Caribbean. Machel’s art has bridged African and Indo-Trinidadian cultural traditions and he has partnered with artistes across race, religion and cultural divides in this multiethnic country. The Hindu descendants across the region are also observing Maha ShivRatri in mandirs and private and public spaces.
Mr Fete to participate in Cosmic Dance of Shiva
Two of Machel Montano’s 2022 soca season releases speak particularly to the euphoria he is unleashing from his spiritual journey – Just Dance and Happy Papi. As videos of neither of these have yet been released, it is anticipated that much of the video footage will draw from his sojourn with Sadguru and the Isha Foundation. Machel has reportedly been at Isha’s headquarters in India for the past seven months, preparing for the Isha Foundation’s Great Night of Shiva. Previous Maha Shiva celebrations and the trailer shows Sadhguru in the Cosmic Dance of Shiva. In Hindu mythologically, the Cosmic Dance of Shiva has the potential for creation, regeneration and dissolution of the multiverse.
Machel’s Journey to the High Life
In 2021, the self dubbed Mr Fete Machel signalled his spiritual journey through his release, the high energy, high tempo characteristic of his music, High Life.
In High Life, Machel channels Bob Marley to create a soca-reggae hybrid. It is a too-obvious pun and clear engagement with the ganja/marijuana culture that accompanied Indian indentured immigrant labourers to the Americas/Caribbean and the West Indies, and which Bob Marley and his Rastafarian Movement adopted and adapted, along with vegetarianism and the dread locks of the Shivaji movement as quintessential to the Rasta lifestyle as I trace the interconnected Eastern and Western pre through post colonial/Columbian heritage through my ground research and education activities.
As a UNESCO heritage Educator/Facilitator worked closely with the Reggae,
Rastafari and Maroons among other multiethnic Caribbean communities to advance the inscription of Reggae on the UNESCO Registry of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Read more on the inscription of Reggae on UNESCO international lists here
Interconnected ancient eastern and primordial New World
This new age culture in fact reconnects the ancient eastern culture to the primordial ancient pre-Columbian cultures in the region narrowly defined in dominant post colonial discourse as Meso America and South America which is unfurling in my new film MotherContinent – Mothers Motherlands MotherCultures through the MultiMedia MicroEpic the new creative genre I have devised to accommodate and condense expansive and lofty traditional long form epic genre for new media which was introduced to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission/British Council annual forum of scholars on International Women’s Day/Commonwealth Day in 2021.
The muse, mentor and inspiration of MotherContinent is Ma, the Nonagenarian, who would have celebrated her 92 birthday today but passed on to merge with the supreme Atma on Divali Day, November 2022. Her repertoire of transmigrated and adapted songs and wisdom that span Bhojpuri and Caribbean Chutney/Soca musical traditions for the backdrop of some segments of the MultMedia MicroEpic.
Cosmic Myth and High Mas culture
In the High Life video, Machel also displays a few steps of the mythological Cosmic Dance of Siva, which Sadguru with Machel in his crew would perform at the Great Night of Shiva! The Cosmic Dance of Siva, in his form as Nataraj, embodies the collective energies of the universe from creation to dissolution, is performed by Sadhguru and his disciples at the Maha Shivaratri celebrations.
Landmarks of Machel’s tantric journey, harnessing kundalini energy from base chakra upwards is captured in his 2014 hit, Happiest Man Alive. Carnival’s raw energy as a conduit for spiritual ecstasy is nothing new, and is represented in its Christian equivalent in such renditions as David Rudder’s 2008 High Mas which transforms and releases the Catholic Mass Liturgy into a irreverential soca wine-chant in praise of Jah in the bacchanalia prelenten Carnival festivities.
Up Next The Live Performance at ShivRatri – In Review
Listen to the youtube playlist on these songs here
About ShivRatri
The Great Night of Shiva corelates with the global emergence from the devastating Covid 19 Pandemic into a state of regeneration. The Great Night of Shiva/Maha Shiva Ratri variously celebrates cosmic events that include the night Shiva performed the Cosmic Dance of Creation, his marriage to Parvati and his drinking of the poison churned from Ocean of Samskara during the celestial Samudra Manthan cleansing of the world from oppression, evil, hate, greed and other negative social forces. ShivRatri celebrations connect ancient eastern and western traditions of the old and new worlds.
Devotees offer elements of nature milk, leaves, fruit and water during the festival which is austere and devotional.
Stay tuned for more of this cosmic diasporic journey.
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Dr Kris Rampersad is a UNESCO and National Geographic-trained Educator, Global Woman Tech Makers’ Ambassador, Google Applied Skills Ambassador and an independent international MultiMedia cultural heritage consultant, producer and publisher. She was instrumental in pilotting of the UNESCO Indentured Immigrant Routes initiative as former Vice President of the External and Relations Commission of UNESCO and Vice President of the UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage as an independent member. Read More
To support, collaborate, sponsor or advertise with these creations make contact.