They call themselves the Oral Fuentes Reggae Band. But the name might be misleading because they are part reggae, part soca, part brukdown, and part punta rock. They call their brand of music – reggae funk. The band’s name sake, leader and guitarist is Oral Fuentes - a Belizean-Canadian. He was born and grew up in Belize but left to attend the Academy of Performing Arts in Ontario Canada. He lives in Central Canada but is in Belize this week promoting his group’s first Cd – “Oral Culture.” He stopped by our studios this morning and we had a listen.
Oral Fuentes, Oral Fuentes Band
“We come from different backgrounds with rock and jazz and stuff so we kind of mix it up a little bit and things like that. And a lot of the times too though a lot of the artists, a lot of the songs these days sometimes don’t have like a good horn solo, like they go straight through the rhythms and things like that. But I told my colleagues that not everybody dance, not everybody could punta. So we tried to mix it up a bit with different styles.
This is the group’s first CD but I did some other stuff, which you don’t want to give it to the public, if you sell something you got to be good. So this is much more of the high quality one in that sense. It is something different, that’s what we try to do. We try to do something that no one else is doing because after a while every song sounds the same. But it is not that we can’t do it in that style but we got to mix it up a bit.”
The CD is available in select stores but you can also can buy it online at http://www.oralfuentes.com. Fuentes says his band includes musicians from Chile, Ghana, Cuba, Scotland, the USA, Canada, and of course he is from Belize.
