Quinazo is fronted by Quino, aka Joaquin McWhinney, former lead singer of Big Mountain, the local reggae band that had a top-ten hit in the mid-nineties with the single “Baby I Love Your Way.”

Quino made news in 2006 when he played Chicano protest rallies with his new band Quinazo. “On May 1, we’re gonna shut this country down,” he said at the time about the May Day events that protested anti-immigration laws.

As of 2009, Quino teaches vocational classes at Olympian High, which he says is the “third closest high school to the border,” but that the district is conservative. “It might as well be 500 miles away. There’s a lot of Navy kids in Otay [Mesa].... I don’t spend that much time engaging in my political beliefs in my workplace. But I’m not going to give up my platform when I jump on stage.... To me reggae music still has this mystic, revolutionary part to it. I got into reggae music because I wanted to change the world. To me Bob Marley was Che Guevara with a guitar.”

Quinazo's album La Ofrenda - recorded at Signature Sound - was released in June 2009.