Ozomatli poses at a press conference in HCMC last Monday

A Grammy award-winning from Los Angeles rocked audiences last week with a blend of music styles that transcends cultural and social boundaries.

“You drive down Sunset Boulevard and turn off your stereo and roll down your windows and all the music that comes out of each and every different car, whether it’s salsa, cumbia, merengue, or hip hop, funk or whatever, it’s that crazy blend that’s going on between that cacophony of sounds in Ozomatli.”

That was band member Jiro Yamaguchi describing their band’s music two years ago in a 2007 NPR (National Public Radio) interview.

Their music comes from Los Angeles and the different worlds that converge in the multicultural city. The seven-piece band is both the voice of the multicultural city of Los Angeles and of the world. Their music - a pioneering mash-up of different genres - has long followed a key mantra: it will take you around the world by taking you around L.A.

Ozomatli set the stage alight with two feverish concerts in Binh Duong and Ho Chi Minh City last week.

The cultural exchange concerts, organized by the US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, also saw traditional musician Ho Nga joining the band with Vietnamese bamboo percussion and the 16-chord zither. Not a perfect match but the collaboration did please the crowd of over 2,000 foreign and local residents at Lan Anh Club in HCMC last Wednesday night.

Vietnam is a stop on Ozomatli’s Asia tour as Cultural Ambassadors of the US Department of State.

“I was thrilled and excited. I felt it’s necessary as an artist and also a human being to come here and express a different form of interchange, a different form of communication.

“I’m really looking forward to learning and experiencing Vietnamese music, art and culture,” said saxophonist and vocalist Ulises Bella who was a former member of The Los Angeles Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Singing for the underdogs

Originally formed in a Los Angeles area labor protest, Ozomatli subscribes to a longstanding mission to spread the message of global communication and understanding through music and diversity. The band spent their early days participating in community activist events, protests, and city fundraisers.

Ozomatli’s tireless humanitarian outreach and community involvement found greater scope after the US Department of State invited it to serve as Cultural Ambassadors in 2007.

The successful partnership between Ozomatli and the State Department has sent the band to Africa, South America, the Middle East and Asia, sharing their music with the world and constantly learning music from the world.

“For us, especially going to a place like Vietnam, it’s truly important to absorb the local music and to experience it first hand. We’ll be going to different places to pick up local music and interacting with local musicians. I’m also looking forward to going to CD stores, stocking up on all the local music and digesting them later when I get home,” said Bella.

Reaching out

During their visit, Ozomatli participated in a few humanitarian activities for the disadvantaged in HCMC, visiting vocational centers for the disabled, HIV clinics, schools for the deaf and blind and other outreach centers for people in recovery.

“We’re especially excited to be participating in the outreach programs because it’s important that people understand that the disabled, people living with drug addiction, and people living with HIV are just regular people. They’re facing tough situations, and they need the support of their community to get through them,” said one of the original founders of the band, Raul Pacheco.

“The kids really look forward to the band visiting again. They have had a wonderful day playing and singing with Ozomatli. It seems like there are no borders, no barriers between us. Hopefully, there would be more cultural exchanges like this in the future,” said young teacher Nguyen Viet Truong, who helped his visually impaired students at Thien An outreach center to prepare to sing the song Dong mau Lac Hong (The bloodstream of Lac Hong) as the opener for the program at Lan Anh Club.

The goodwill ambassadors will tour Thailand next week and continue to carry out their mission by bringing music to under-privileged people there.

“We all have to eat and grow ourselves but doing charity helps us fill our souls in a way that money can never do,” said Bella.

Reported by Mai The