Photo: Sasa Mackic
Roskilde Festival 2005 interview:
Ska Cubano
Ska Cubano plays a fresh and happy mix of traditional
Jamaican ska and cuban sounds like mambo, son and changüi.
We met the manager of the group, plus singers Natty Bo and
Beny Billy before the concert at the Ballroom stage.
From mineral water to Cuban ska
The story of this very entertaining live band actually began
with a businessman named Peter Scott, who invested in Cuba,
the country famed for good music and rum. Nevertheless, the
investments where bound for hotels and mineral water, and
in the end Peter Scott got bored by business and created a
music company instead. He was a fan of reggae and ska, and
had some contacts on the English ska scene. Soon he and the
singer Natty Bo developed the musical concept of "how
would it have sounded if Jamaican ska had influenced Cuban
music in the 1960s".
Reincarnation of Beny Moré
Connoisseurs of Cuban music might recognize one of the voices
of Ska Cubano as the one of Beny Moré, the legendary
Cuban singer from the 1950s. But actually, it belongs to someone
else; Beny Billy, born Juan Manuel Villy Carbonell. Beny Billy
not only sings like Beny Moré, he actually believes
he has a certain spiritual connection to the famed singer;
"I carry the spirit of Beny Moré in my body",
he simply puts it. "When I sing, I feel what Beny Moré
felt. That is my identity".
"His voice is so close that many people think it is
actually Beny Moré on the CD", manager Carlos
Baltazar adds. "They have asked us if we were doing remixes
with Beny Moré. But we were not; it’s Beny Billy."
Slick Top Cat
The other front man of Ska Cubano is a well-known cat from
the British ska scene; Natty Bo from Top Cats. Dressed in
a slick suit, with a diamond in one of his front teeth and
something half a pound of golden rings on his fingers, this
guy makes an impression.
We asked Natty if it wasn't quite a jump from British ska
to Cuban music.
"Yeah, British ska actually has nothing to do with Cuban
music at all", he agrees, but explains that he has a
solid collection of Cuban music, and that Beny Moré
actually is his favourite Cuban singer. "There wasn't
any ska in Cuba. And by the way, the ska "scene"
has different interpretations of what ska is", the cool
cat continues, his tooth diamond reflecting the sun light.
"The original ska from Jamaica is what me and my musicians
around me deal with. We call it "Ska authentic"
or "Trad. ska" and it has influences from big band
swing and R'n'B, calypso, mento and Cuban music."
Originally, when Peter Scott initiated the rehearsals, the
tempo of ska music was difficult for the Cuban musicians,
because they were used to afro-cuban rhythms like guaguanco,
son and rumba. But they got the hang of it. Ska has a special
kind of feeling to it, that can take some time to get in to.
Natty Bo puts it like this: "It’s like an off-beat
feeling that has to be organic. Whoever's laying down the
rhythm are the people who are playing off-beat or pushing
or pulling the beat. So each different song has a different
feeling to it."
Reggae more well-known than ska
As a ska singer, Natty knows about the roots of the genre:
"Skatalites where the first big band to play this music
and all the famous people like Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Toots and the Maytals, Prince Buster and all the biggies from
Jamaica in the 1960s – they were originators of that
type of music too", he tells us. "So, you know,
when you tell people about ska, they actually know more about
reggae than about ska. It's a new thing to them, because in
the 1960s this music was only really contained within Jamaica,
and a little bit in England too, because a lot of Jamaican
artists were going to England at that time, people like Laurel
Aitken and Rico Rodriguez... So it didn't really explode as
much as it could have, back then," Natty sums up. "So
now when ska comes up, it's fresh again!"
Published July 15th 2005
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