Glastonbury Festival Glastonbury Festival 2000
Ozomatli
Jazzworld Stage
22:50 Sunday 25th June 2000
Right.
It's Sunday night at the end of a wicked Glastonbury, who am I going
to see? The choice boils down to two: the musical revelation of
last year that is Ozomatli's musical gumbo; or the legendary David
Bowie, who's been stuck in a creative rut since 'Let's Dance'. Chali
2na versus The Thin White Duke. The future versus the past. Well
I've never been one for nostalgia, so it was nuts to Bowie and off
to the Jazzworld for me.
Ozomatli
are a major label anomaly - a boundary crossing band with roots
in every American ethnic group whose music refuses to be pigeonholed.
With a nine piece band playing every kind of Latin rhythm, one of
LA's most distinctive emcees in Chali 2na from the Jurassic 5 and
scratching and cutting on most of their tracks, they are unique.
Their recorded music displays all the influences you'd expect in
a band whose members have roots all over Central and North America,
but hail from LA - that total latin sound, full of soul and yet
laced with a funky hiphop edge that Los Angeles has infused into
their music. I was expecting a lot from them live and boy, did they
deliver.
Ozomatli
started their set in exactly the same way as last year in the dance
tent - hidden amongst the crowd before suddenly starting to play
their instruments and wending their way onto the stage. Automatically
the crowd pushed forward to see more and people were already starting
to move when the opening bars of 'Como Ves' kicked in, and it only
got funkier for the rest of their set, as they reworked most of
the tracks from their eponymous album, including the singles 'Cumbia
de los Muertos' and 'Superbowl Sundae'. Their usual DJ, Cut Chemist,
was strangely absent, but his replacement, Obi Wan Spinobi, was
more than adequate, despite his slightly wack name, and his cutting
was a constant feature. The band members, all seemingly totally
comfortable with an array of instruments as well as the singing
duties, looked like they had been playing together for 20 years,
despite the fact that they only have one album under their belts.
The star of the show, but only by a margin, was Chali 2na. The loose-limbed
rapper was an awesome spectacle, throwing his rangy body all over
the stage in a non stop blaze of energy, hyping the crowd, dropping
his throaty old-skool rhymes over the latin beats and grinning all
the way through. This was what makes live music so wicked - seeing
a band enjoy the crowd as much as the crowd is them. And there could
be no doubt that they were having fun - they were getting us to
chant along, putting all their efforts into making sure everone
had a good time, and after a climactic finish when Chali 2na, having
debated it for nearly 10 minutes, finally leapt off stage for a
bit of crowd surfing, the entire band reassembled in amongst the
Glasto punters. There, they treated us to an impromptu half hour
of percussion and singing as they wandered around the Jazzworld
field, leading the crowd and getting us to sing the Sesame Street
theme song with them.
As
they finally gave up, having rocked Glastonbury for the second year
in a row,and I drifted off to find my mates, I knew I'd made the
right choice.
review by Ill Will
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