Party Politics

Being in a 10-man democracy is hard work—just ask L.A.-based collective Ozomatli, in which every decision has to be unanimous. “We’ve been a band for 12 years, and we spend more time with each other than people do with their families,” tabla player/percussionist Jiro Yamaguchi points out.

“We’re a bunch of men living in close quarters and constantly working together, so over time there are always gonna be conflicts, no matter what. One way I put it is, like, if you went on the road with your fellow office workers and colleagues and were living with them 24/7, what would happen? In the course of any normal relationship, things are bound to happen, and life shows up, and that’s what we’re dealing with.”

Recognizing that conflict can destroy a band, and being pretty sensitive dudes despite their tough-guy appearance, the members of Ozomatli have done “a lot of personal and group work in terms of interpersonal relations,” says Yamaguchi, “and because of that, I think we’ve grown up a lot and matured over time—and we get along better than we ever have. So morale is good.” He pauses for a beat. “Talk to me in a year.”

Ozomatli applied this increased maturity to the creative process for its fourth studio album, Don’t Mess With The Dragon, which brought with it a pair of longstanding challenges. first, would the band finally find a way to capture the infectious energy of the live performances on which it had built its reputation? And, second, could the band come up with the radio hit that’s eluded it since the release of its self-titled 1998 debut? In other words, did these critically endorsed double Grammy winners have it in them to conjure a viable merger of art and commerce?

NO ‘WONDER BREAD’
“Trying to recreate that live energy of a show in the microscopic, sterile environment of a studio is like a dog chasing its tail,” says sax player Ulises “Uli” Bella. “It’s very hard to do, especially with a band as large as this one is. We’ve done the underground, we’ve toured ourselves to death, we’ve got all the accolades and awards, and now we wanna take it up to another level. And I think the best way we can do it is through the songs.”

The presence of high-quality material addresses both of the key issues—enhancing the album’s appeal while also providing potentially viable tracks for radio. “In a lot of ways,” Bella admits, “our music has been a little too challenging for radio. Language mixes, style differences—sometimes it’s hard to put that in a box. So this time around, we said, ‘let’s give them something that they’ll be able to service, but at the same time not kill who we are.’”

In February 2006 the band brought its instruments and beat-filled hard drives to the Calabasas, Calif., home studio of KC Porter, a bilingual veteran whose specialty is taking music from Latin artists and making it more accessible to English-speaking audiences; his discography includes extensive work with Ricky Martin and Santana, including 1999 mega-seller Supernatural. Ozo had first worked with Porter as guests on Santana’s 2002 Shaman album; the next year he co-wrote and produced a track for the band’s third album, Street Signs. “He brought a lot to the table,” says Yamaguchi.

“The whole idea,” says Porter, “was, ‘How do we make every song something that everybody is happy with?’ That was truly challenging because they have so many influences, styles and ideas, so you want it to feel uniform, but you don’t want it to be compromised. You don’t want it to be what Santana always referred to as ‘Wonder Bread’; you want it to have the grain and the nuts.”

THE POLITICS OF DANCING
Working in a half-dozen studios over a period of months, Ozomatli and Porter baked up an album that reflects the band’s diverse ethnic makeup and “oppositional politics” (how it characterizes its brand of activism). But even more fundamentally, the members of Ozomatli believe in the politics of dancing. “To dance in a group,” says Bella, “is something very primitive—something that binds us all.”

On Don’t Mess With The Dragon, the band embeds its messages in deep grooves and intertwined musical styles. In the case of “Magnolia Soul,” explains Yamaguchi, “We wanted to make a song about what happened with Katrina and that whole tragic event, and the song dictated the style—it’s a modern, second-line-influenced piece.” Similarly, “La Temperatura,” inspired by the immigrant marches that took place last summer in downtown L.A., is powered by a Central American rhythm known as garifuna.

The evolution of the title track—which began life as a beat on rapper/percussionist Justin Porée’s laptop—illustrates how a song takes on added layers as it works its way through “the Ozo committee,” as Yamaguchi calls it. “People were playing the videogame Dig Dug, which is about a little guy who’s buried underground, and you’ve gotta watch out for the dragon.” The premise then deepened into a brotherly warning playing off of the opium-smoking colloquialism “chasing the dragon.” When the track was nearly finished, Porter—recognizing that the dragon is a mythological Chinese creature—came up with the idea of adding erhu, a traditional stringed instrument from that country, to the song’s bridge. He invited his erhu-player friend Lin Cheng to come down and provide the solo, and the song took on an unexpected new shape and flavor.

“Her playing transformed the track into something that was way more advanced than any of us would’ve thought of,” Bella offers. “It kicked our own asses, in a way, and it [exemplifies] the overall idea of inclusion. You listen to the section now, it’s a dub reggae feel with a Chinese instrument on top of it. It’s like, ‘What the f—’s goin’ on?’” Which could serve as a general description of this one-of-a-kind assemblage.

“Their palate is so global, there aren’t enough Pantone colors to please a band like Ozomatli,” Porter says with admiration. “They can be drawing from anywhere at any point. Those subtleties are what makes them so cool—there will always be colors for Ozo to explore.”