Various Artists - Mista Savona presents Havana meets Kingston (Baco Records)

The concept? Inspired by legendary Cuban band Buena Vista Social Club, Australian producer Jake Savona aka Mista Savona, assembled a number of well-known and lesser known Jamaican (Sly & Robbie, Bongo Herman, Bopee, Ernest Ranglin, Randy Valentine, Turbulence, Cornel Campbell, Prince Alla, Leroy Sibbles, Lutan Fyah, Exile Di Brave...) and Cuban (Rolando Luna, Barbarito Torres, Julito Padron, Beatriz Marquez, Solis, Maikel Ante, El Medico...) artists in Havana's legendary EGREM studio. The result is a highly successful hybrid album, with Jamaican and Cuban influences and genres effortlessly blending together. For 'Havana meets Kingston' Cornel Campbell rerecorded his '100 Pounds Of Collie' classic, be it in the company of Prince Alla, Leroy Sibbles, The Jewels, Cali P, Lutan Fyah and Exile Di Brave, and 'Vibracion Positive' is a fairly successful Spanish cover of Bob Marley's 'Rastaman Vibration', but our personal highlights from the track list are 'Carnival', one of the first singles from the album featuring Solis and Randy Valentine, the instrumentals 'Carnival Horns' and 'San Miguel 410', respectively with Ernest Ranglin on guitar and Julito Padron on trumpet, and since Savona looked to Buena Vista Social Club for inspiration, a version of mega-classic 'Chan Chan', here featuring Maikel Ante, Felix Baloy, Solis and Eugenio Rodriguez, could not be missing from the track list (and there's even more, as Buena Vista classics 'Candela' and 'El Cuarto De Tula' were also revisited). If Mister Savona also succeeds in putting together a touring live version of this project, this might well be one of the great revelations of the upcoming festival season!