Nicky Bomba is a true musical maverick. Call him a gypsy, a troubadour or a pioneer – no matter how you see him he’s a man who is motivated by his muse and one who has taken a remarkable journey. He first gained public attention in the mid 90’s with his band The Truth and became part of Australia’s emerging funk scene with contemporaries like Skunkhour, Supergroove, Dig, Vincent Stone and Swoop.
He soon moved on to jazz in 1998 with Banana Oil and had no sooner picked up an APRA Award for the most performed jazz composition of that year before he took up his next venture – a reggae come funk outfit simply called Bomba.
A collaboration with Joe Camilleri produced the Limestone album, but once that was completed he joined the John Butler Trio as their percussionist, touring the world off the back of successful albums like Sunrise Over Sea, April Uprising and Flesh & Blood.
Somewhere in the midst of his John Butler years Nicky still found the time to front a number of his own bands – Bustamento, a project that delved into Jamaica’s musical heritage with mento music and the Melbourne Ska Orchestra, a band of varying size that usually boasts more than 30 musicians at any one time. In just a few years the Melbourne Ska Orchestra became a hit at some of the world’s biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, the Montreal Jazz Festival (playing to over 70 000 fans) and drawing rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The band also won the Best World Album at the 2016 ARIA Awards for their second album Sierra Kilo Alpha.
Nicky Bomba is the kind of guy who seems to constantly have a stream of ideas running through his head. You can hear it in the way he speaks, the pauses in his conversation as a new train of thought hits him while he’s still answering the previous question. It’s an infectious enthusiasm that makes you feel better about yourself and the world at large, much like his music.
In part 1 of this podcast Nicky looks back at the formative years of his career – the successes, frustrations and mistakes made along the way. Nicky’s passion for music in its many varied forms is there in every word and idea, as is his desire to share that love by connecting with his audience. In the digital era when music is so freely available it hasn’t been an easy ride, but his love of music and his need to create as an artist have always found a way to make it work. If there’s a how to manual for making it in the modern world of music, Nicky Bomba would be a very likely candidate as its author.
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