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Can the melding of Jamaican Ska and Afro-Cuban music be a marriage made in heaven? It can be if you're Natty Bo and Beny Billy, the lead singers of Ska Cubano...
Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Caribbean music styles like Trinidadian calypso were popular in Cuba, and Cuban music greatly influenced musicians of other islands. Legendary Cuban crooner Compay Segundo recorded a calypso album in the 1950s, and early Jamaican ska bands regularly infused Cuban beats into their songs. By the 1960s, however, Cuba and Jamaica went in different musical directions, as Cuban music developed into salsa and Jamaican ska led to the worldwide phenomenon of reggae. A UK/Cuba collaboration called Ska Cubano imagines what would have happened had Jamaica ska blended with the big band blasts of classic Cuban mambo and son. Ska Cubano is the brainchild of British entrepreneur and music lover Peter Scott, whose love for classic Jamaican ska and Cuban son and mambo led him to dream of a musical group that could reunite these long-lost musical relatives. Scott enlisted South London singer Natty Bo, a UK ska veteran, the singer with one of London's most popular ska bands, the Top Cats, and a fan of all things retro to oversee the musical development of the project.
Natty and Scott traveled to Santiago de Cuba to put together the band. They looked for singers but had trouble finding someone with enough pizzazz who could cross the Latin and ska rhythms. I was sitting in an old bar when Beny Billy walked in, recalls Natty. He started strumming a tres and singing. His voice penetrated the walls. People stopped what they were doing. I knew I had to ask him to join the band.
Not only does Beny Billy have a voice reminiscent of the great Cuban singer Beny Moré, but Billy insists that he is the reincarnation of Moré. Billy whose real name is Juan Manuel Villy was raised in Cuba by his Jamaican grandmother. His voice is so similar to Moré's that he was called upon for the soundtrack of last year's El Bárbaro del Ritmo, a film about Moré.
One thing that the band did not anticipate is how they would appeal to different audiences because of their diverse influences. The Latin music fans may not have heard ska before, and the people who knew ska might not know about Beny Moré or Colombian cumbia, says Natty. We had a gig where people from Ecuador came up to us afterwards and said it was the first time they heard of ska and they really love it. At first they didn't know how they should dance to it. But people can dance how they like: ska style, Latin style, or a new style. That's the joy of it! 06/25/06
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