Street Scene: Ska Cubano brings Caribbean stew to the world

By:JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer

It's an intriguing "what if" proposition: What if Fidel Castro never closed off Cuba from the rest of the world, and the then-common exchange of musical ideas between Jamaica and Cuba had continued?

Putting that theory to an experimental test has yielded two CDs (and counting) from the musical project known as Ska Cubano, which brings its percolating, dance-ready mix of Jamaican and Cuban grooves to Street Scene on Saturday.

Speaking from his London home, Ska Cubano singer and co-leader Natty Bo said what intrigued him when music-lover Peter Scott first approached him about the idea of melding Jamaican and Cuban styles was the fact that both islands' rhythms had come from Africa.

"Everything's to and fro" musically in the Caribbean, said Bo (a stage name; his given name is Nathan Lerner). "A lot of the West African influence came from slavery times. Yoruba and Congolese and Senegalese music were spread around the West Indies. You have African rhythms with Spanish, English, Dutch and Portuguese influences. But Spanish guitar, flamenco guitar, has gone back to Africa through cora music. And Cuban music was popular in high life in Ghana and Senegal."

Still, if Cuban and Jamaican rhythms share a common root in Africa, Bo said the rhythmic structures are very different today and finding Cuban and Jamaican musicians who could play both was a challenge.

"The phraseology and musicianship are different," Bo said, later adding, "the rhythms are completely different.

"Basically, we change the phrasing to fit on the ska rhythm. It's just find the space where they fit. The combination makes it different. The Cuban dances are all hip-twisting dances; they all move their center. Early Jamaican music, like mento, (and its) dances are like that ---- but the ska is very different, it's back and forth. Ska is closer to the mambo dance, because mambo has the same linearness."

While the first album was recorded in Santiago, Cuba, with Cuban musicians taught ska by Bo (and a stack of ska CDs), the touring bands have been drawn from Cuban and Jamaican expatriate musicians living in Europe, Bo said ---- in large part because the Cuban and U.S. governments put up so many hurdles for the Cuban musicians to get American visas.

It's an 11-piece band, and Bo said it's modeled after the great Latin and swing big bands of the 1930s and '40s. A former circus clown, Bo said he tries to incorporate the showmanship of a Cab Calloway into the band's stage show.

But he emphasized that like the two CDs, the live show is all about the music:

"You have a ska audience in the world ... and the Latin audience. For each audience to see something that mixes the different styles of music, either they love it or they hate it, but there's no in-between.

"So far most people have really dug it."

When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Qualcomm Stadium parking lot, 9449 Friars Road, San Diego

Tickets: $75, per day; $115, two-day pass (subject to change on Friday)

Info: (877) 840-0457 or www.street-scene.com.