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Jose Lorenzo Reyna is nothing if not a risk-taker. As a 17-year-old in 1994, he decided to leave Cuba by swimming for three days to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo. Maybe even more daring, he purposely chose to live in Richmond, a city with less than 3 percent Latinos, so he'd learn English — fast.

Turns out his willingness to do the unthinkable could be a great thing for the Richmond music scene. Because these days, Reyna, a 25 year-old art major at Virginia Commonwealth University, is also founder and lead singer of Timbason, Richmond's local band playing exclusively Cuban music.

Started 6 years ago, Timbason has Latin horns; percussion and strings that Lorenzo is convinced can make anyone want to grab a piña colada and move. As the city's Latino population continues to balloon (it's doubled in the last decade) and hit the radar, it could be that the band's sound will find a comfortable home here after all.

Timbason covers both traditional and new sounds coming out of Cuba. It's Cuban “folk,” (meaning the Buena Vista Social Club sound that stormed music charts in the late '90s). And it's the newer Timba that people on the island listen to and dance to today. High trumpets, more electrified bass, tight choruses — Lorenzo says it's an unforgiving Hajiaco (mishmash soup) of R&B, hip-hop, Latin jazz, rumba and a bunch of other genres most of us in the states have never heard of like Songo.

“Cuban music is hard to play,” Lorenzo explains. “You really either have to have grown up surrounded by it or you have to have studied it quite a bit.” There are basic recipes: mambo, cha-cha, salsa, son, boleros, all of which can be butchered in a cheesy Doris-Day way. Or you can get the real spine-tingling effect of a dozen instruments improvised layer after layer on a basic rhythm, say, of a Guaguanco (Cumba — cun-cun — Cumba-cun-cun), until the room rocks.

I'm like an old man,” he says, laughing. “I don't drink. I don't smoke — not anything. My only vice is black coffee.”

Not surprisingly, Lorenzo works as the band's booking agent, manager — you name it. And the work is tough. Connecting a Richmond audience to the sounds of a mambo is tricky work, especially when club venues are so scarce in Richmond (especially for a whopping 11-piece band). The band plays primarily clubs in Shockoe Bottom and at large private or corporate parties. (In Northern Virginia, where the Latino population is a lot bigger, it's another story.)

“What I see when we play is a group of people dancing and having fun, that's it. It's not really important that I'm singing in Spanish or if they're American or not. If you can transmit your energy through the music, you're OK. Besides, Cuban music is really just beautiful, and it's so much more than just salsa.”

By Meg Medina.