Jake Savona, aka Mista Savona is BIG in Jamaica, but he’s an Australian. His 2007 release Melbourne Meets Kingston was a smashing success and ahead of another album release later this year, he’s coming to Adelaide to party Caribbean style. Loving Cool Runnings as much as any 90s kid, we just had to ask Jake how he got to work with so many Jamaican legends.

 

When I was studying music in Melbourne I got a scholarship to go overseas and study in the UK. I did that, and once I’d finished I ended up in Brixton, which is pretty much the Caribbean heartland in London. While I was there I went to a whole lot of parties, Dub parties and was exposed to the music in a big way. I’d kind of already discovered Capleton, who is a great Jamaican singer when I was in Australia, but hearing it all when I was over there, in the street and at parties and stuff, just blew me away. I ended up at kind of like a house party… but they had turntables… and Horace Andy was there and jumped on the microphone, a lot of people know his voice from Massive Attack and I think, after all that, I was sold. When I got back to Australia I got my first sampler, I’m a keyboardist originally, but I got my first sampler and started messing with production and pretty much from day one Jamaican music was a big influence.

 

I think I was 21 or 22. I actually grew up as a classical piano player and got into Jazz and improvising and sort of listened to a bit of Bob Marley back in the day and that’s how it all started.

 

I actually put out a couple of albums after coming back from the UK. I played in a whole lot of different bands but I would have released my first solo album in 2000 and then put out another one in 2003. Melbourne Meets Kingston was actually my third solo release and by that time I realised that I really needed to get to Jamaica and meet a whole lot of artists and take my music to the next level, and I did that, and that’s where Melbourne Meets Kingston comes from. I came back to Melbourne from Jamaica with all these different vocals on my beats and then hooked up with some of my favourite musicians back here and they now perform with me in the Mista Savona band.

 

I went to Jamaica with a couple of friends and they were both really hooked up, way more hooked up than I was - and Jesse I, who runs a big reggae show in Melbourne on PBS FM, came with me and he had a whole book of contacts. It wasn’t too hard. We spent a bit of time in Kingston, doing some record shopping and then we went to a little town on the West coast called Negril. People started hearing that I was there, this Australian dude making music, and people just swung by on their way through from Kingston. In the end I wasn’t chasing singers at all, they were kind of coming to me, which was great. We just performed at WOMAD in the UK last July and I went across to Jamaica from London in August and spent another month there in September recording and that’s where the material for this new album comes from.

 

Well look, at the moment that’s a good question. There was some fantastic support for the Melbourne Meets Kingston record and we’ve done so many great shows on the back of that album. I think with this release, apart from the reggae community in Australia, they haven’t made much of an impact here but that’ll change, I think, once the record is released it will be different. But the bigger, more exciting thing is that it’s doing really well overseas. There’s a French Magazine running an article on the 7” we released in Jamaica. I’ve been getting feedback from around the world… Brazil, Argentina, Germany, from people that have heard these tunes and there’s some great feedback there. Some of my favourite all-time Jamaican singers are on this album and some London artists as well, Capleton and Anthony B who are the people who really got me into Jamaican dancehall in the first place. There’s Sizzla who’s another favourite and I was lucky enough to work with and spend a couple of days hanging out at his house. Horace Andy from Massive Attack is on it too.