Nicky Bomba is a man cut from unique cloth. He has toured the world for decades under various guises, and his passion for performance (not to mention his unrestrained enthusiasm in conversation) quite honestly has to be seen to be believed; the guy is a powder keg.
Yet as captain of the Melbourne Ska Orchestra, Bomba shares the stage with anywhere from 14 to 35 other sharply dressed players, and he couldn’t be happier. Following their self-titled debut in 2013, the stars have at last aligned, and the MSO are back with Sierra-Kilo-Alpha.
“I think there’s a beautiful core, this great scene,” he says reflectively. “This new album is a great example of how we wanted to experiment with the ska form and really dig deep. It’s just a matter of having planted a lot of seeds, and now we need to nurture them as we sow more. It doesn’t happen without any planning. The shows have to be good, your new songs have to be something different to what you’ve done before. It will always evolve. Any musician who is in it for longer than ten or 15 years, bands will develop, members will come and go, styles morph into something else, but that’s part of the joy as well. It’s not a static thing, and I find that incredibly exciting.”
Their latest single, the splendidly titled ‘Funkchunk!’, finds the band in epic, theatrical form, yet the first single from Sierra-Kilo-Alpha, ‘Satellite’, resonates most strongly with the soul of the Melbourne Ska Orchestra. With an outfit so large, it is no simple task to ensure that each member can feel they are contributing equally. But as ‘Satellite’ – and indeed, the album overall – demonstrates, this is a beast with many faces.
“You’ve hit the nail on the head. Ska is about community, it’s about hope, danger, and fun. It’s all those things,” says Bomba. “With ska, you have to take a bit of a risk. It was born of the independence of Jamaica in 1962, and that was an incredible time. Finally they were going to be self-sufficient, it was an exciting time, and ska was synonymous with that. The Skatalites were the main band then. They played interesting solos, interesting chord formations. There was a lot of fantastic complexity.
“I was already playing reggae and dancehall and rocksteady anyway, so embracing ska was embracing the roots of everything I knew. So from a songwriting perspective in the band, this album opened things up even more. Everything was on the table, every idea. [We agreed,] ‘Let’s try and make everything work.’ I think as the captain, if you like, seeing that sense of family and feeling that love is really what the band is all about – it’s what music is all about! Go back to the earliest roots of music and it’s about celebrating a marriage or a birth, or someone is returning from a hunt. Music is celebration and community.”
Should you have been fortunate enough to have caught one of the band’s live shows over the last few years, Bomba’s words will come as no surprise. Rarely will you find such packed crowds on their feet, dancing with benign energy. Melbourne Ska Orchestra have found accolades both at home and abroad (Pauline Black, singer of ska revival band The Selecter, praised them in our interview last year), and their momentum seems certain to keep the dream alive. After the uncertainty of launching such a cumbersome act – multiple musicians, numerous instruments – it must seem a relief to know that the band has found some stability.
“I don’t think relief is the word. I think more… amazement,” Bomba laughs. “It’s not like we were trying to achieve any commercial success. Any songwriter would love to have a hit record that is played for everybody and ensures an audience. A lot of bands have one hit song and try and build a career on just that. If one of our songs became a hit, our profile would grow a lot more, sure – we’d be able to do more performances at a better fee, so we just wouldn’t need to worry too much about all those financial concerns. That’d be a beautiful thing. But underneath it all is a love of music. The band couldn’t be what it is without that.
“The first album was really a collection of that whole time together, having a lot of time to work on the songs and tour them around. It was a reflection of what our world was then, and sneaking in covers that had our own twist. This new album is, ‘OK, we’ve made a footprint here – now we can just do more of the same, or we can take it a step further.’ A lot of famous bands make their own sound by not copying style, not just looking at the charts to see what One Direction are doing. We’d never do that. But you do want to be able to be heard on the same playing field. So we spent more time mixing and mastering, we spent more time making sure that the ideas translated a lot stronger. It wasn’t just a ska lovers’ album. It would be an album that has a wider appeal.
“‘Funkchunk!’ is a perfect example of that. Going through that whole process – well, we love all these songs, but it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. So we put ‘Funkchunk!’ out there for feedback, and it was incredible! That, if you like, is an exercise in playing the commercial game. You want your work to be appreciated and reach as many people as possible.”
It has been a long but thrilling road for Bomba and co. Sierra-Kilo-Alpha is the work of a band firing at its collective creative peak, but that isn’t to imply Melbourne Ska Orchestra have nowhere to go but down. There is always another mountain to climb, another ocean of sound this gregarious captain and his larger-than-life crew might sail.
“2003 was when the band started, but it was only as a celebration of ska,” says Bomba. “That year was the 40th anniversary of when Millie Small came out with ‘My Boy Lollipop’, which put ska on the map. The six or seven years after that, nothing really happened with the band. It was really just a tribute band that would come together once a year, but in 2009 I managed to find a festival spot in Queenscliff, and we changed tactics there. We started putting a better show together, and on that show, we actually got offered a recording contract to do ska covers, and I said, ‘No – we’re writing original songs, and that’ll be the album.’ In the end, we released it on the 50th anniversary of ska in 2013.
“I pinch myself, but also give a gentle pat on the back for everyone in the band. We all knew there was something interesting there, there was potential, and we all committed to seeing where it would go. The more we play, the more we get together, we realise with the musical talent in this band, we could go anywhere. I’m excited about the next five years. Who knows the things we might do?”
[Melbourne Ska Orchestra photo by Ian Laidlaw]
Sierra-Kilo-Alpha is out now through ABC. The Melbourne Ska Orchestra perform Friday May 13 at Manning Bar with Hot Potato Band; and The Grand Arch, Jenolan Caves on Saturday May 14 with The Rythym Hunters.
