by Louis Head

Los Van Van, Rubén Blades and Editus, and southern California phenoms Ozomatli blew the figurative lid off of San Diego Sunday, September 12, 1999, playing the same stage in front of thousands of sun drenched, exuberant fans. The performance capped the three day San Diego Street Scenes Festival, which included such luminaries as Gilberto Gil, Baaba Mal, Gato Barbieri, Israel Vibration and Roots Radix, Olodum, The Roots, Stanley Turrentine, Steel Pulse, Lee Oskar, and Ray Charles. Even El Vez and The Commodores were there along with a host of other blues, jazz, zydeco, R&B and rock acts. Throughout the festival in the city’s Gaslight District, local and international folkloric dance groups wove through the streets adding to the crazy atmosphere. The Festival drew around 80,000 people per day, and resembled more a state fair than a music festival.

Ozomatli should be on anyone’s short list of acts to see live. Their self-titled CD is predicted to sell over 200,000 units by the end of the year, with nearly all of the sales coming from the strength of their performances. Ozo defies definitions. This multi-racial band includes a Japanese tabla player, a Cuban conguero, a first class hip-hop DJ, rapper Charli 2na, and Chicano/Mexicano musicians well-versed in their norteńo heritage. Their tight, hard blowing horn section is reminiscent of the best of Tower of Power, and does not hesitate to drive a crowd nuts by doing the pogo as they play. Radio stations cannot fit Ozo in a commercial box, and outside of a few college stations they do not get much play. They rocked the World Party North stage at Street Scenes with their combination of socially-charged lyrics and merengue, salsa, cumbia, ranchera, reggae and hip-hop beats. Feeding off their audience, their exit from the stage was not out the back, but rather into the crowd as they led hundreds in a long conga line out to Island Street. Check out their website at http://www.ozomatli.com and by all means, catch them in concert the first chance you get!

The Street Scenes Festival included 15 stages spread out over 16 city blocks. In other words it was a technical nightmare for sound and lighting engineers, and a maze for drivers carrying musicians to and from performance areas. It was not uncommon for acts to be running late due to stage requirements and short change times.

Rubén Blades and Editus began a half hour behind schedule, but managed a strong set of more than an hour during which they presented a shortened version of their 1999 tour repertoire. Blades’ first live outing in five years has brought satisfaction to long-time fans throughout the country, and has won many new converts. The afternoon festival atmosphere in San Diego saw entire families in the audience in tribute to the timelessness of Blades’ work. As throughout the tour, the show opened with Editus numbers Malecón and Paquyne to showcase the talents of that band. This group has received mixed reviews by many who want to compare them to Seis or Son del Solar, but this is unfair at best. They were formed around a core of musicians from the original Costa Rican band, and filled out by other very capable musicians from that country, including many who have studied at prestigious schools such as the Superior Arts Institute in Cuba. Equal to New Mexico performances seen by this reviewer, the band provided a solid vehicle for Blades’ work. The soloing capacities of various band members were also very evident throughout the afternoon.

When Blades arrived to sing Juan Pachanga, he looked hardly changed from the same man twenty years ago. Upon hearing this and other standards such as Maria Lionza and the much-requested Pedro Navaja, the crowd became one huge coro, as people joined in on verse and soneo, many remembering where they were when they first heard these songs. Vida, from Blades’ new CD Tiempos, reminded people that these same themes still ring true and consistent today. Todos Vuelven was a powerful reminder to many in the audience who had left their native lands to make southern California their home. The members of Los Van Van were beginning to arrive backstage when Blades ended his set with Muévete, which he dedicated to that Cuban group and in which he sang fittingly of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques and of East Timor.

One characteristic of Los Van Van is their total lack of pretentiousness while performing. Despite the fact that they are the undisputed number one dance band in Cuba, these guys do not act like big stars. It is not unusual for Juan Formell to come out on stage prior to a show and begin tuning his bass, and for people in the audience to not even realize who he is. Probably due in part to the shortness of time between sets, within minutes after Blades finished his set, nearly everyone from the band was up putting their keyboards and drums together, fixing their stands, checking their mikes, talking with folks in the crowd.

But all that didn’t make the opening Ya Empezó la Fiesta anti-climatic in the least. Blades had people grooving throughout his performance. Van Van came on and put a torch to the sea of people which by then extended back two blocks from the narrow stage area. Like Blades, Formell and his boys played a shortened set of about an hour and a half, and concentrated more on material from their previous CD including Ni Bombones ni Caramelos and Llévala a tu Vacilón. Two numbers from the new Llegó…Van Van recording shined - Permiso que Llegó Van Van and El Negro Está Cocinando. The latter features the antics of veteran band sonero turned court jester Pedrito Calvo, and has already become an anthem on guapismo and Cuban neighborhood life for any Cuban who has heard the song. It was a classic Van Van performance, introductory to many in the audience who were amazed at the combination of precision and funky groove, the vocal talent and choreography of Pedrito, Mayito Rivera and Roberto "Guayacán" Hernández, and the virtuosity of all of the musicians of the band.

It had been ten years since the previous and only occasion in which Los Van Van and Rubén Blades had performed together in the same place, and the question in everyone’s mind was when Blades would be back on stage. Juan Formell answered this halfway through the set, inviting the Panamanian up as the band tore into Esto Te Pone la Cabeza Mala with the place going berserk. The normally deliberate and intense Blades reverted to a style of singing which made him a known entity in New York years ago, abandoning all caution as he engaged in a blazing improvisational contest first with Hernández and then with Pedrito. Strutting on the stage, saluting Formell, saluting Los Van Van and Cuban music with charging, rat-tat-tat soneos was all something not to be forgotten. He stayed onstage the rest of the performance, joining flautist Jorge Leliebre on coros and playing the bell or güiro.

After the show, talk focused on the future. A possible tour with Rubén Blades. A special project with drummer Mickey Hart. But the main question was whether Los Van Van would play Miami. An October 9 date at the Knight Convention Center in that city had been canceled the day before the San Diego appearance due to heat applied by a small sector of the Cuban exile community. Said trombonist Alvaro Collado, "It’s high time, and a shame that we still see politics getting in the way of things. But we have a lot of legal possibilities in this situation, and we are still confident that we will make it there."

He said everything with the same tone of voice as many Cuban music veterans who over the years have learned not to wait for any miracles with respect to the United States. But the confidence was evident, and the knowledge that Los Van Van are beginning to establish themselves with U.S. audiences, yet another step forward for a band which has been breaking barriers and inventing new sounds for thirty years.

 - louis@salsaweb.com

*Postscript - After several days of strong public pressure, Los Van Van were finally confirmed to play in Miami. Quite appropriately, the group will be the first act direct from Cuba to perform within that city in nearly 40 years.