INTERVIEW MISTA SAVONA
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is the first project she‘s done that has this hip hop or urban edge, and she is so natural at it, in fact she shines, so I can‘t wait to work with her some more. Solis, he is on Carnival and does a wonderful version of Candela as well, he‘s not famous in Havana. He is in his late 40s and he‘s travelled a bit overseas, but he is certainly not a famous artist. His voice is so unique, so great… hopefully, for some of the Cuban singers this will be a great boost for their profiles.
That‘s just another piece of art! Rick is a really fantastic filmmaker in Melbourne I met through my friend Lauren Beck, who is working on the documentary with him. When we did the online fundraising, we included the fact that we want to bring a film crew. Rick obviously did an amazing job with the split screens and all. The scenes he captured in Cuba, he went to Jamaica to capture them as well, so he knew from the beginning what he wanted to do.
From laying out the songs in your head, did you have certain artists in mind already who would sing on it or was it a process? It‘s a good question! I think often I hear the rhythm or have an idea for the core, and you can hear straight away what artist would sound good on that. There were a few I was really hoping to get but we didn‘t, so hopefully on the next record I will get them. With 100 Pound Of Collie, I knew I needed Leroy Sibbles on that song. Him and Prince Alla singing the chorus together is magic.
Did you encounter any difficulties along the way? Actually, everything went miraculously smoothly, synchronistic. I was very lucky. In hindsight there could have been so many things that could have gone wrong, with the visas or permissions or whatever, a lot of things haven‘t happened before, it was a kind of experiment. But I had faith, we had faith, and it all fell into place. Probably later, when the introduction video to the project went viral, I started to realise how big this could be and felt responsible for representing Cuba well on the album and Jamaica also. What‘s been hard was being in the studio mixing the
Another person I want to highlight is Rick Merecki, the director of the video for Carnival.
