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By Shikin Louis
KUCHING, June 24: American reggae band Big Mountain aims to shed light on North America’s struggles through their music at Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) stage tomorrow night (June 25).
According to its lead vocalist Joaquin ‘Quino’ McWhinney, the band had the opportunity to visit the traditional houses at Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV) and watch performances by other acts on the first day of RWMF last night (June 23).
He described the shows as “impressive” and the cultural festivities as “beautiful”, stating that he had never seen such an atmosphere before.
Thus, on their part, the band wishes to bring their gesture of peace and unity through their musical influence.
“Even the band’s name was inspired by the Native Americans’ struggles in North America, where people are fighting relocation and maintaining their rights to their traditional lands and culture.
“We believe strongly in the rights of indigenous people and keep land and culture and languages thriving, so we thank (RWMF) so much as this is an honour to be here,” he said during a press conference held at Damai Beach Resort today.
The band’s percussionist and vocalist Jakob ‘James’ McWhinney mentioned that reggae represents the music of the people, and the words are all about bettering the people as a community and their environment.
“Through our music, we’d like to hold the standards and try to get the people to recognise the consciousness and awareness of the importance of preserving these things.
“Thus, it’s an important gift to be able to travel the world and become reggae musicians and hold true to our ideals and hopefully influence and create a bigger unification of that understanding of our consciousness of being aware of our surroundings and protecting those things that we hold true to our hearts,” he added.
Big Mountain band comprises seven members, namely Quino, James, bassist Michael ‘Mikey’ Ortiz, guitarist Audley ‘Chizzy’ Chisholm, keyboardist David ‘Kavika’ Gorospe, drummer Paul ‘Groove-Galore’ Kastick, and Richard ‘Goofy’ Campbell (absent).
Among their hits are ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’, ‘Sweet Sensual Love’, and ‘Get Together’.
The band is the headliner for RWMF Day 3 alongside Tanzania’s Safi Theatre, Indonesia’s Rizal Hadi and Folk, United Kingdom’s Afriquoi, as well as local acts, namely Suk Binie (opening act), Tuku Kame, Geng Wak Long and Meruked. — DayakDaily
