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  Ozomatli Interview
interview 0190 added 29.03.04 words: Nikesh Shukla
technical:
QED
Ozomatli: I am the Lord of the Dance, said he…
Barely a week after this interview with Ozomatli is done,
two of their members will be involved in a scuffle with the police at
the climax of one of their concerts in Austin, Texas. Their standard
finale, involving a parade through the audience and often on to the
street, in Austin resulted in alleged assaults to bassist Will Dog and
percussionist, Jira Yamaguchi. The fact that their simple celebration of
music and unity through celebration of sound and multiculturalism would
upset conservative coppers in America’s crazy state mean that this
interview takes on a whole new light.
Ozomatli come to the fore in the late nineties with their first
self-titled album, a mixture of Latino and Hispanic rhythms and
instrumentation, along with hip-hop blasts from Chali 2Na and Cut
Chemist. They quickly ascended through endless touring to be known as an
amazing live band (all the while incorporating this finale in the crowd)
and this led to second album, “Embrace the Chaos” with rapper Kanetic
Source and contributions from Common and De La Soul. As their renowned
grew so did their tour schedules, and they quickly became troubadours
travelling the world, bringing their positive lyrics and inspiring
energies to audiences all over. They became Glastonbury and festival
favourites. Recently they were in town to begin pre-promotion for
forthcoming album “Street Signs” and did a three night stand at the Jazz
Café. I met with Will Dog, Ulu Bayer and Jabu Lani to chat about their
worldview, their experiences and what they hate about London. Respect
and love go out to the band and anyone involved in the incident in
Austin…
Introduce
yourselves your band, your mission statement and any pet hates you may
have about London:
 JabU: Pet hates, like pet peeves? Oh, okay…
Uli: Uli Bella, saxophone, clarinet. The mission statement is to
stay sane and my pet peeve is flavourless food.
J: It’s Jabu. My message is to the kids… drink!! Drink a lot and have a
good time. My pet peeves is all this curry out here… I can’t eat
nothing. I need some McD’s or something man. Peace.
Will: Will Dog, I’m bass and background vocals for Ozomatli. And y’all
ain’t got no sun here!!
How did the
members of Ozomatli meet?
U: Most of us learnt our instruments in school, or on the streets or
with friends. And as far as how we hooked up, it came out of a labour
dispute in LA. There was a community centre and they would have weekly
parties to keep this community centre together. The people who showed up
were the people who played in Ozomatli.
J: Kids, I was just playing before. Don’t drink or nothing like that. It
was a joke. Don’t listen to that. I hooked up with the band three or
four years ago. They hooked my old band up, let us do some shows with
them. We’ve been rolling from there. It was a live hip-hop out of LA…
the band was Forth Avenue Joneses. That was my old band… but I’m here
now, suckers!
How long have you
been with Ozomatli?
J: Five or six months maybe. I’m still wet behind the ears. But it’s all
good.
Is that an
intentional Ozomatli thing… to rotate your MC’s? From Chali 2Na to
Kanetic Source to Jabu?
(interviewer immediately grimaces at lack of tact in the question.
Jabu keeps smiling.)
W: Not at all. I don’t think that’s intentional. With this band… it’s
hard to keep ten people on the same page. Not a lot of people come and
go but… it’s not like every five months someone leaves. But people
change, some get older… not me. Some people wanna do different things
musically. In this band, not one person really gets to shine. You’re
part of a group and you have to play your part as that way. Me as a
bassist, I don’t get to solo every song. I mostly back up what else is
going on and laying the foundation. I think, some people have had a
problem with that. In our MC situation, there’s only really a certain
amount of songs you get to rhyme on so if you don’t get into other
things like percussion, you might feel stagnant.
J: I play a mean tambourine.
W: I think, not everyone has access to musical instruments. It takes
money to buy a bass, buy an amp, that costs money. People gotta do
something.
"...In this band, not one person really gets to shine. You’re part of a
group and you have to play your part as that way..."
With such a huge
range of influences, where would Ozomatli like to be placed in a record
store?
W: We’d have our own section, then we’d be placed in ‘O’ in every
section…
J: With life-size posters…
U: Except country…
W: Nah, fuck it, we’ll take country. First we gotta have our own
section. Before A, there’ll be an ‘Ozo’ section, then ‘A,B,C…’
What does Ozomatli
mean?
 U: Ozomatli is a deity in the Aztec calendar that represents a god of
the jungle, music, dance, passion. It’s an Aztec word.
W: We’re kinda like a world band.
U: First and foremost, we’re an LA band.
What does it mean
to be an LA band?
J (screaming): It means we don’t take no shit from nobody!
(laughter)
U: We represent LA in the styles that we play, in the cultures of the
members of the band, it’s a slice of LA. I mean, the sound of Ozomatli
is like driving down Sunset and hearing the music blaring from all the
different cars.
People say that
you are band that needs to be experienced live. Do you feel that you
represent yourselves as well on CD, or is it more of a live thing?
W: I think our CD recording has always been a work in progress. From the
first time we recorded till now, we’ve certainly got better. Our live
show takes it cos we’ve always been a live band.
(At this point, the room erupts in loud music shocking everyone and
pushing Boneca, my accomplice for the evening to begin a two-minute
impassioned spiel on why he loves the band. When he finishes, Jabu asks
for a hug. A cross-Atlantic hip-hop miracle is witnessed by all.)
J: See, the music brought us together.
U: When you hear albums, there’s ways of making the albums sound good or
not good but a lot of times people hire musicians, the difference with
our albums and live is we can play what we do live. Our music isn’t
complicated, a bunch of easy parts played by ten musicians. But a lot of
the time, when we’re mixing music it tends to sound corny… mixing
hip-hop beats with Latin music with Middle-Eastern music and it can seem
corny and watered down. That has always been our challenge, to overcome
that.
When you come up
with songs, do you all sit together in a room and jam?
W: It can happen like that or people can come in with ideas
individually.
Tell us about your
new CD. Describe your evolution through the debut to Embrace the Chaos
to the new stuff…
 J: This new album is bananas, yo! The new album is off the hook. It’s
called “Street Signs”.
W: This album is a true Ozomatli record. We experienced on “Embrace the
Chaos” being on a major label and it forced it to do certain things and
as a band, we weren’t in a certain place where we could fight what was
happening and we weren’t in a place where we could completely finish
that record. It’s really hard to make a record with this band, it’s a
lot of time, a lot of energy. And I think, on this record, we had the
time to really put into it. The last one was quite thrown together, but
this one is true Ozomatli. I really like it and we’re proud of it.
Everyone on it is truly amazing and really came through.
B: Jabu, you’re stepping into Kanetic Source’s shoes and on the last
album, you had a lot of guest appearances with Will.I.am and Common,
Medusa, De La Soul, are there any guests on the new album or is Jabu
holding it down?
W: So we’ve got Jabu on it, Covert Jimmy, Chali 2Na does a track. You
say “tuna” here! So, yeah, I mean, it’s off the hook. It’s coming out
here two weeks before it comes out in the States. It’s called “Street
Signs”, www.ozomatli.com
B: You must have a big following in Europe…
W: June 8th, it’s coming out on June 8th here. It’s hard to pin down
where our fans are cos in the states, on the West Coast it’s crazy, and
here it’s crazy but we’re constantly growing. We wanna get bigger and
bigger.
J: What’s that one place? Leicester? Leicester is crazy!! You’all gotta
work on your crazy!
You seem to be
constantly touring. How much a year are you on tour, being ten people do
you get sick of each other and any tour bus rules?
U: Ground rules for the tour bus is no shitting on the bus. That’s the
biggest rule. This year, we’re gonna be touring like mad, maybe nine or
more months of the year. On the road. Getting tired of each other is
just a natural thing but all of us, even when we’re tired of each other,
we can still hang. Once we’re on the stage it gets all better.
So, no separate
buses for each band member? Jabu gets his own bus…
(all laugh)
W: I’ll be on that bus. That’ll be the party bus.
J: As long as the singer Mya is on that bus, it’s all good. I’d ride in
a minivan.
What’s the best
band you’ve shared a concert bill with?
W: Asian Dub Foundation, Santana.
J: Not Offspring… definitely not them…
Have you got a
story about them or something?
 J: Not available.
W: Olodun. They’re… there’s been like four or five bands that have me
shitting saying, “we gotta play better than this…” Olodun was one of
them. My ideal concert bill? Ozomatli, the Clash, Public Enemy,
Fishbone, Bad Brains… we’d have a festival. So many great bands out
there.
U: The best city we’ve ever played? Hmm, New York…
W: London, Bristol, Cardiff…
U: London’s definitely a great city for us.
You’re just
sucking up to the locals aren’t you?
U: Amsterdam, New Orleans, San Francisco, Toyko, Sidney.
"...Most of us learnt our instruments in school, or on the streets or with
friends..."
What was the first
gig you’ve ever played?
U: First gig was at the Peace and Justice Centre, April 1st, 1995. It
was a community centre. It was a bunch of 30 workers who were fed up
with what was going on in this particular union’s programme. And they
decided to make a change in it. And, in trying to do that, they opened
up a community centre. And we had to support it. A lot of radical
politics, a lot of different things were going on there.
W: Can I ask, why does everyone coming in have backpacks?
Cos the average UK
fan is a backpacker… just joking…
J: In America, you cannot get in to clubs with backpacks on.
What are you
thoughts on Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album”?
U: I mean, he’s fucking with the Beatles catalogue! Man, he got some
balls on him. I heard it was good. Music is one of those things where if
you’re dealing with music and art, it gets all funny. But, “Paul’s
Boutique” they’re probably still paying for samples from that shit. So
it’s one of those things.
J: Remember when they busted Biz for sampling…? That ain’t right.
How important was
the presence of Chali 2Na and Cut Chemist to the evolution of the band?
U: It was important enough cos we grew up with them. They were
representing a certain scene in LA that we grew up with.
Where do you see
Ozomatli being in five year’s time?
J: In everybody’s CD player… BOOM!
U: I think the biggest thing we want to achieve is stay together and
continue working together, continue creating music. If we manage that
then everything else will come. We’d like to play fucking Africa,
fucking China, fucking everywhere… Moscow. The world is huge. South
America, Brazil, Crenshaw.
You’ve
collaborated with loads of different people from Los Lobos, to De La, to
Medusa… any cross-pollination going on?
U: Yeah, all the collaborations we’ve done through the years… on the new
record we had Eddie Palmietti and we’ve been trying to get him for a
long time. It’s finally materialised. We’re honoured to have him on the
record. It’s more of an honour for us.
How did your
infamous entrance and exit idea come about?
 U: I think it was Will Dog’s. Basically, there was another band on the
scene…
W: That he was in…
U: That I was in… I was in Double D.
W: Let me tell this story cos you have ulterior motives…Let me tell this
story. There was a band in LA, which half our band members were in. what
happened, I used to play rhythm guitar for a band he was in. I went to
one of the rehearsals and quit the next day. Cos I had a potty mouth and
also… err. Anyway… they weren’t serious enough but they were just having
fun… so I started my own band, taking the band members I had
relationships with from that band and some other people and that was
Ozomatli. That was to start this community centre. The guy from the
other band didn’t want Ozomatli to play with them. Cos they were kinda
well known in Los Angeles and they didn’t want us to ride their
coattails, and I wanted to ride their coattails cos I knew that we could
be in the same scene as them. We ended up getting a gig with them at the
Viper Room in LA, every Sunday night for a month. And we played two of
them, and that band killed us. We were on first and they killed us the
first two times… Me and Justin got together and we were like, “That band
is killing us. We have to do something that we can kill these dudes
with.” Justin had the idea of starting in the crowd, start outside the
club. I made up some T-shirts that said “Kronik” on it, with loads of
dope Aztec/Egyptian designs on the back. Then we came through the crowd,
and that was the firs time. We killed that band… and Ulu was still in
it. I don’t remember when we started going back in the crowd at the end
but it started soon afterwards.
You gonna tell us
the Offspring story then… I’m sure they don’t read UK Hip-hop magazines.
W: Ok, I’ll tell it. We were on a whole tour with them. Most of the
crowd hated us. We maybe gained ten or fifteen fans every night. Playing
to 4000 booing kids… anyway, this one time, we were playing in
Philadelphia, we dedicated the set to getting a fair trial to Mumia
Abu-Jamal, cos he’s incarcerated in Philadelphia. We dedicated the show
to that and, the show was like pure hate. It was like standing on stage
saying you were Jewish in Nazi Germany. People wanted to kill us.
U: I guess, in Philadelphia, it’s a real black/white issue.
W: I dunno if we were playing for cop’s kids or what. But they hated us.
But we finished our set, held our ground, got backstage called our bus
driver and got the hell out of there.
U: And we were apologising to Pink, who was like our bus driver, and he
said that was nothing compared to Body Count. With Body Count, they
always had to get out of there quick.
"...I mean, he’s fucking with the Beatles catalogue! Man, he got some balls
on him..."
Final question,
what is T-Ray up to?
W: T-Ray produced some of the drums and the bass on this album. He’s
definitely a crazy guy. The first record was magic working with him, and
the second one was crazy.
U: He’s an old-schooler man, old school. He was in that band, the White
Boyz, remember them? He was the DJ in that.
How would you
compare hip-hop now to the scene you grew up with?
U: Back then, it was definitely cutting edge and somewhat thrilling. Now
they’re selling cars to it. There’s great hip-hop still coming out, but
now it’s something different.
Any final
shoutouts/shameless plugs?
 W: Just a big shout-out to the UK for giving us love when we come out
here. Big shout-out to Nicci Cheeks… you know her? You do? She’s my
girl! Big shout-out to myself!
J: I’d like to give shout-out to Ray-Ray, Earl, to Wayne at the 7:11,
I’m coming home fellas! Shout-out to the world, my daughter, TA. I love
you. And that’s it man. Peace.
Then they go and play the most energetic live show I’ve seen for
years, putting all those youths to shame. There is no one not dancing,
and by the end, with the carnival carrying on in the middle of the
crowd, there is no one with a huge silly grin on his or her face. This
is the music of unity and togetherness.
Many thanks to Christine Dallas for ensuring this interview happened.
Much love and respect to the band and Jira and Will Dog. Free the Ozo
2!!
-
Nikesh Shukla
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