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When Raul Pacheco, guitarist and lead vocalist for Los Angeles’ multicultural and multigenred Ozomatli, speaks about Carlos Santana, it is with more than just the reverence reserved for Rock royalty. Pacheco’s awe is borne from knowing firsthand the struggles involved in getting from the streets of L.A. to the place of prominence that Santana now enjoys.
Carlos Santana’s name crops up quite frequently in discussions of the four-year career of Ozomatli. The band came together in 1995 first as a group of individuals protesting working conditions within L.A.’s Emergency Response Unit. During the monthlong sit-in, some of the participants’ musical backgrounds became the topic of discussion, including sit-in organizer Wil-Dog’s politically charged band, Somos Marcos. After swelling its ranks to 10 members, the band changed its name to Ozomatli (after an ancient Aztec dancing god) and began making a name for itself in clubs all over L.A., putting out a vibe that mixed Hip Hop with traditional Latin rhythms as well as the soul grooves of predecessors like Santana, El Chicano, Malo and Los Lobos.
Two years ago the band found itself on stage at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, Calif., opening for Santana. The legendary guitarist came out and introduced his openers as “the future of music.” After the show, Santana offered some sage advice about keeping the band dramas to a minimum so that Ozomatli could fulfill its destiny. That advice was not lost on the band’s members.
“One thing that Carlos Santana said to us was, ‘Work on your relationships in a real way with each other so that you can always rely on each other, and so that you can always stay together,’ ” says Pacheco. “Playing in a band, having a record deal, it doesn’t really matter unless we’re together. He’s been through it himself, he’s been through changes, but he’s been able to stay a musician with a message and an ideal that’s very much intact.”
Taking Santana’s words to heart, Ozomatli is an incredibly democratic group, especially considering the diversity of its makeup. The fact that the 10-member band presents a united front concerning its political causes, its commitments, and even its musical presentation is a testament to their ability to communicate openly with each other about their individual needs within the whole of the group.
“We’re 10 people in this band, and we have to work at our relationships,” says Pacheco of the band’s internal dynamics. “It’s good, because it helps us to be better people, and it helps us to learn how to deal with other situations and other people. We don’t make any decisions without everybody being a part of it. There are things that certain people really want and other people don’t. We always work toward finding a way that we can all be happy with it. We try to keep integrity within ourselves, and know that we have to move together. If one person has a real problem with something and we can’t figure it out, we don’t move forward in that area. We could spend hours just talking about one little thing, because if we don’t, it could cause divisions among us. We do think that compromise is a really important thing to be aware of. You don’t want to compromise yourself to where you’re doing something that you wouldn’t normally do, but it’s important to understand that we all have to give at some point. That’s a battle for everyone. That’s a lesson that goes on all over the world all the time. It’s the whole NATO thing. It’s a mess.”
That very real cooperation occurring within Ozomatli’s varied ranks (Chicano/black/white/Asian membership) has made some segments of the media lavish them with the poster child status of being the new face of post-riot tolerance in Los Angeles. Pacheco says the band will accept that strange role to a point.
“I think it depends a lot on the context,” says Pacheco. “There are a lot of things that are just dead wrong with the city, with the politics and with the way money is distributed. We’ve been asked to do benefits for elected officials, and we were always really careful. We’ve never been able to do that, because something always comes up that doesn’t really jive with us. We’ve done a lot of political benefits for groups that are outside of what I would call normal electoral politics. For us the context matters, because it could be an excuse for something. It could be to say, ‘Well, things are okay in the city.’ And we don’t want to be used in that way. The way we’d like to be portrayed is that we need to rely on ourselves to a certain extent. We don’t want to be used to say, ‘Look, ghetto kids can get along,’ because I don’t think it’s the ghetto kids creating the divisions. It’s the disparity between lifestyles.”
Pacheco doesn’t have many illusions about life in Los Angeles, but he does believe that Ozomatli has made a difference in the community and, because of the passionate commitment of every member of the band, will continue to have an impact. It’s a difficult path to follow, but it is clearly the only one the band is comfortable pursuing.
“People feel very disconnected,” Pacheco says, not only of Los Angeles, but the country as a whole. “People say, ‘Why don’t people vote?’ To a certain extent, the parameters of your vote are limited. There’s got to be a different way where we can do it. That’s a lot to come out of music, to come out of a band. But we try to spread that message. The hard thing for us is that we don’t have a specific answer of how to make things better. We just know that if it’s in your heart, and if you take steps forward, things will start happening. Other people will be inspired by what you’re doing. What we’re trying to do on this tour is to have people from local organizations along with some organizations from us that we’d like to spread the message about. And the message is about taking the government into your own hands, and being able to step up and fight for issues. We want to find those people so we can support them with our music. This is what keeps us together. It’s the dream. We can do things with our music.”
And once again, the discussion comes back to the godfather of Latin Rock. His presence looms large in the Ozomatli camp, especially with their current tour plans.
“The last time we saw Carlos Santana, he was playing three nights at the Fillmore,” Pacheco remembers. “A place that was really well-known, and where he had many opportunities to play his music and show what he was about. We were backstage in the dressing room with him, and he said, ‘We can go on tour and we can play for people all over the world, and we can try to connect with people who are doing things in the streets for the people who have to live their lives every day in a way that is real. We can get together with those people all over the world and that’s what we should do.’
“And we wondered, what does it mean to do that? We were not sure. But we knew that there are people fighting the good fight, and those are the people we need to support. In one way, we think ‘Can we do that? In another way, we think, ‘Why not try?’ “.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 1999.
