It's a "New Day" for Big Mountain-
Quino Digs Up His Revolutionary Roots for Upcoming Album

Big Mountain lead singer Joaquin "Quino" McWhinney has weathered some rough turbulence--from struggling reggae musician to pop star back to struggling reggae musician--a rags to riches to rags story of sorts. But Quino is determined to shed the trappings of pop music and get his band back into a conscious groove with its political, yet--to quote Quino--"commercially applicable" blend of reggae.

Fronted by the bilingual Quino, an American of Irish and Mexican descent, the band was formed in the early 90s and has had numerous personnel changes over the years. While Quino, who is the only original member still on board, and his younger brother James McWhinney, are the most high profile members of the current ensemble, hardcore Jamaican session musicians including drummer Carlton "Santa" Davis and guitarist Tony Chin were featured in the group's mid-90s lineups.

The southern California based group's 1992 debut CD "Wake Up" included the West Coast hit "Touch My Light," and its equally catchy Spanish version "Llena Mi Vida," as well as the more rootsy "Peaceful Revolution" and the herb advocating "Lick It Up."

But, by far, the band landed its hugest hit on the charts with its reggae cover of Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way." The song thrust the band, albeit briefly, into the limelight, but the experience eventually soured Quino on the pop music scene. Recorded for the "Reality Bites" movie soundtrack, the track was also included on Big Mountain's 1994 "Unity" release on Giant Records. The "Unity" album was the first of three the band recorded for Giant, a subsidiary of Warner Bros Records, and marked the beginning of a relationship marred by the group's disdain for the big label's commercialism.

Although the Giant releases (the aforementioned "Unity," 1995's "Resistance," and 1997's "Free Up") garnered mixed success in the U.S., Big Mountain became quite popular in Japan and still remains, in Quino's estimation, the number two reggae act in Japan behind Maxi Priest. (This is excluding one Bob Marley, of course.)

Frustrated by mandates from record executives to put out pop oriented songs, the group left Warner, and, with the financial backing of a Japanese record label, formed its own Rebel Ink label. The 1999 CD "Things to Come" was the label's first release.

While Big Mountain's second Rebel Ink release, "Cool Breeze" (2001), was a solid yet polished effort aimed squarely at the Japanese market, Big Mountain's third release on the label, "New Day" (street date 1/28/03), shows the group returning to a more rootsy mode, exploring themes varying from the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Americas to globalization to love.

Quino spoke candidly about his life and career in the reggae music business via telephone in November 2002 from the Rebel Ink offices in San Diego.

Steve Serpiente (SS): Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? Your family, where you were raised, etc.?

Quino (Q): Well, I was born in the southern California area--Newport Beach to be exact. My mother is Mexican. And my father actually passed away when I was seven-years-old, but he was like Scott-Irish. So I'm an Irish Mexican. I was blessed with the birth of my brother when I was seven-years-old. My dad went to college to study entomology, which is the study of insects. But he was applying it to agriculture. He was a farmer, more or less. When I was about five-years-old, he got a contract with Dole Bananas. So we went down to Honduras and lived down there for a couple of years. That's where my brother James, who is also a member of Big Mountain, was also born. My dad actually ended up passing away down there. We picked up and came back. It was just me, my mom and my little brother for a few years.

I think that whole experience--being down in Central America and getting a taste of what different culture and different music was all about--it really opened me up. It gave me a whole different perspective, because right away I realized that there was something different about the United States and about the other countries like Honduras. You know, even back then I realized that there was a big economic difference--that we were treated differently down in Honduras, that there was something that had to do with having money or privilege attached to the idea of how people are treated in this world. So I just continued to grow, got back into the southern California thing, and just kinda became a southern California boy. But I always held onto my Spanish. As I started to grow, I started to get more and more into music.

I was about 14 years old when I first heard Bob. So that must have been about '79 or '80. I never got to see Bob, but there were a few different influences. For some reason or another, I got really radical politically early on. There was no doubt that I was a left-winger, and I was more inclined to side with movements or struggles that included a fight for justice and trying to make this world better. I became a progressive early on, and by the time I was a teenager, I was already reading books about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. I was really into socialist movements, and I was reading books about Mao Tse Tung and all that. And when I came across Bob, it struck me right away that he was singing about different things and that he wasn't like all the other artists that I was listening to--which at that time was mostly Earth, Wind & Fire, the Commodores, Ohio Players and black R&B, soul, and funk. But Bob--there was something about him. I remember telling somebody, "Yeah, he's like Che Guevara with a guitar in his hand." It struck me the way he was singing--it was full of conviction. I just knew that he really believed in the things he said. It wasn't like a lot of people. There's a lot of people that sing with passion, but I got the sense that he was singing. So that hit me heavily, man, and to tell you the truth, I never looked back. I've always been into all kinds of music, but I recognized that reggae was a way that people were using to spread more of a controversial message. And I decided that's that what I wanted to be about so I decided that reggae music was gonna be my media. I just love the whole physical part of putting reggae music together - just the love of the music and the appreciation for simplicity and meditation rather than gimmicks.

SS: Well, you answered my next question which was about your musical influences.

Q: I also really got into salsa music. For a while I also decided that I was gonna become a salsa musician. So salsa and reggae were neck and neck for a minute there because I was really into reggae, and I was really into salsa. But I recognized that salsa was just… people that listen to salsa and appreciate salsa weren't going in the same direction as the reggae people were. It was more of a superficial, materialistic kind of message that was being put out in salsa--a lot of sex, a lot of macho, machismo and shit like that. So I wasn't really down with that.

I always told myself I was going to be the first revolutionary salsa artist. Like Ruben Blades - he has that vibe. I guess you would call it salsa protesta, you know, protest stuff. I'd love to change one of these days...

SS: Do a salsa album?