How Mista Savona Conceived 'Havana Meets Kingston'

Melbourne keyboardist, producer and DJ Mista (Jake) Savona is making history. He's the facilitator of Havana Meets Kingston - the first major collaboration between musicians from the islands of Cuba and Jamaica.

Savona, sometime member of the hip-hop group Illzilla, has a long relationship with Jamaica's reggae scene. In 2007 he released the landmark Melbourne Meets Kingston via Elefant Traks. Savona has also collaborated with Sizzla. Not unreasonably, he proclaims himself "Australia's leading reggae and dancehall producer".

"I've been going to Jamaica since 2004," Savona says, from his current Byron Bay base. "I go every year, every two years, to work on music projects there. My first trip to Cuba actually happened in 2013, because a friend had just come back from Cuba and I saw his photos and I was like, 'Oh, wow! I have to get there'. I looked on a map and I couldn't believe [Jamaica and Cuba] were right next door to each other. I was thinking, 'I'm crazy, I haven't been before'. So, in 2013, I organised a ten-day trip to Cuba from Kingston. Of course, I got there and fell in love with the music and the culture and realised how different it is, but also there's a lot [they have] in common. That was where the idea for the project was born."

When researching, Savona was surprised to uncover no significant undertaking of musical cross-exchange. Conceiving Havana Meets Kingston, the producer initially flew Jamaican musicians into Cuba to record with their local counterparts over ten days in 2015 at Havana's EGREM Studios - where US guitarist Ry Cooder oversaw 1997's phenomenal Buena Vista Social Club. Savona's huge cast includes legendary Jamaican rhythm unit Sly & Robbie and Buena Vista Social Club players Rolando Luna and Barbarito Torres.

In fact, Savona had previously liaised with Lowell "Sly" Dunbar. "I think it was 2013, I did my first recording at Tuff Gong - which is Bob Marley's studio. Sly was available, so I got him on drums. We had a great time. He loved my keyboard-playing. So that was a great way to meet him." And Dunbar was one of the first people Savona approached for Havana Meets Kingston - the drummer then suggesting his cohort Robert "Robbie" Shakespeare. "They're very different personalities. Sly is super-mellow, very chilled-out. Robbie's got more of a gangster vibe - he knows what he wants, he knows what he needs."

Curiously, the Caribbean contingent was unfazed that an Australian should be orchestrating Havana Meets Kingston. "They're used to many people coming in that love the music and wanting to be part of the music or working with them," Savona says.

To finance Havana Meets Kingston, Savona secured an Australia Council grant, while launching a Kickstarter campaign to cover a film crew. The album will be issued in two volumes, the first out in November and the other "later next year", coinciding with a documentary.

As such, Havana Meets Kingston ingeniously fuses Jamaica's sound system styles (roots-reggae, dub and dancehall) with Cuban folk and jazz (son, salsa, rumba and Afro). There are both original and traditional songs. The lead single, Carnival, featuring Cuba's Solis and the British-Jamaican Randy Valentine as vocalists, generated heat back in February.

Communist Cuba occupies a peculiar place in the Western imagination, being alternately vilified or romanticised. Savona admires its free housing, healthcare and education. And he praises Cuba's coordinated response to the monster Hurricane Irma that minimised casualties, despite degraded infrastructure. "The Cuban government is very efficient and very organised when it comes to this stuff, way more than many of the other Caribbean islands. So I think they all evacuated almost a million people from the north coast of Cuba where the hurricane was hitting it." Still, though, Cubans are proud; Savona acknowledges their "frustrations". "Internet access is very difficult and very restricted - and they're the kind of freedoms that Cubans really crave." Regardless, Cuba is "clever" to embrace tourism - capitalising on the allure of its music culture.

Havana Meets Kingston is auspicious for another reason. Diplo's Major Lazer has popularised Caribbean hyper-hybridisation. "With Major Lazer, it's an interesting one because about half of what they do I love and about half of it I can't stand," Savona says candidly. "Diplo's certainly become a tastemaker. But some of what he does is brilliant and honestly some is terrible. I actually bumped into him at [the US festival] Burning Man three weeks ago! We had a bit of a chat in the morning after an allnighter. It was very interesting to see him in that environment. I have a lot of respect for him."

This month Savona will tour with Valentine and Solis as Havana Meets Kingston Sound System. "This is a very unique show. No one's done something like this before - having a live DJ set with a Cuban and a Jamaican singer. So it's gonna be really electric and very, very unique. I'm excited to present it."