SKA CUBANO
!AY CARAMBA! (Cumbancha CMB CD1)

What's in a name? Clearly the parents of the world's most famous baby never heard of Dr Spooner, the English don who always switched initials inadvertently. When he sent his daughter to post a letter she pissed the most. So Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie called their offspring Shiloh. Are they nuts? His school chums will call him Piloh Shitt, it's inevitable. Which brings me to Ska Cubano. I had heard of the band, I think they had a track on the last BBC World Music awards CD, but I only just heard their second CD, but it's not particularly ska, and not really Cubano. I think Cumbia Jazz is a more accurate description. There's a couple of louche latin lotharios on the cover looking like tryouts for a Cab Calloway costume contest: Natty Bo & Beny Billy. Mister Bo, a retro ska singer & DJ from London, was on a trip to Cuba when he met Señor Villy, a Beny More impersonator, singing in a bar. Their voices meld together well and they have a band of hotshots capable of throwing down ska sax, Cuban tres, Cumbian piano, whatever it takes. The result is greatness. They take a different tack from New York Ska Jazz Ensemble, heading more towards a pre-bebop 1940s jazz sound which they achieve with smoothness and suavity. My favourite tracks, though, are the cumbias which they invest with vigour and great humour (not to mention shrieking trumpet and dancing clarinet), and the novelty numbers ("Big Bamboo" & "Istanbul" a Tin Pan Alley/music hall song from the 1920s). Among the ska tracks, a wild treatment of Beny More's "Marianao" stands out for romping excitement. "Chispa Tren," an original composition by Bo, tilts towards Raymond Scott & is an aural delight with its knackered mechanism and cartoonish joie de vivre. Frankie Laine's 1951 hit "Jezebel" gets Prince Busterdized. Despite the "Tom Jones does Las Vegas" grandiosity of the melody, the band chugs on relentlessly even when Natty seems to be a semi-tone off. (But, then this is two-tone music, right?) Haitian santeria is up next. Is nothing sacred?! The ritualistic merengue "Bobine" comes across with dead certainty & a deep understanding of the traditions of Caribbean praise-singing. To end there's the icing on the cake: "Cumbia en Do menor," a hit for Lito Barrientos that I discovered through the great MEN WITH GUNS soundtrack. Sophisticated pan-Caribbean cut-ups with lots of jazz and love.