This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on August 15, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Hit the streets in the style of Canon Perdido

In this powder keg era of agitation and justified rebellion, it can be salutary to see a peaceful uprising such as the one that took place last Saturday on Canon Perdido Street. Said friendly uprising of dance-loving masses was incited to take to the streets by the elegant and cheeky retro swing band. The big bad voodoo daddy (BBVD) (born in 805) and LA’s Ozomatlithe hybrid style of a Latin rock-funk band. Both bands are known for high energy and good vibes that are best enjoyed neither standing nor sitting. (Leslie Dinaberg’s story and lots of photos by Ingrid Bostrom can be found here.)

The official reason and background for the big street party in front of the popular Lobero Theater was another centenary celebration in the city – after the 100th anniversary of the Granada Theater and the “Old Whatever Days” fiesta tradition. Here, the Lobero, which last year celebrated its 150th anniversary since the theater’s founding, was celebrating the centennial of the prestigious building – designed by George Washington Smith and Lutah Maria Riggs – that replaced the more stuffy original Lobero. Busy local promoter/philanthropist Earl Minnis provided the support needed to bring the party to life.

The party, which was free to all attendees, was an ideally multicultural and intergenerational affair. BBVD proudly sets its style radar on the music of the ’30s and ’40s. Their block party set ranged from the raunchy “Don’t You Feel My Leg” to the family-friendly and Disney-inflected “I Wanna be Just Like You,” the Sherman Brothers’ Cab Calloway-esque classic from Jungle Book Fame. Concise arrangements and a rousing live energy are the band’s trademarks. At one point, singer Scotty Morris teased, “We’d love to play a ballad now… but we don’t know one,” before launching into another jump-blues adrenaline rush.

As a headliner, Ozomatli’s infectious grooves and versatile sound were a perfect fit for the set, climaxing – as is usual at Ozo shows – as the band glided through the crowd in the heat of rhythmic enthusiasm. This was busking at its finest, with the line between artist and audience beautifully blurring – not unlike Jon Batiste’s performance the night before.

We are, he is and the two met in the Bowl

Speaking of positive atmosphere at a high level and audience interaction: The Santa Barbara Bowl came to life in a special way when Jon Batiste came to town last Friday with his winning smile and poise, as well as a deep, organic musicianship that always seems to take the listener into consideration. He basks in the presence of the place and the specific audience he is in at the time, a rare gift. (Read Leslie Dinaberg’s review here).

At 37 years old, Batiste’s story is already legendary: He rose from a first-class job at the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to a Grammy for his album We are and an Oscar for co-scoring Pixar’s SoulThe document American Symphony tells the highs of his rapid career, his American Symphony epic aimed at Carnegie Hall and his wife Suleika Jaouad’s battle against leukemia.

And there he was at the Bowl, bursting with musical energy, marching into the crowd for an encore with his band (well, except for the acoustic bassist, who stayed in his seat on stage). This was no random appearance in the audience area, but the most epic Bowl crowd walk ever, with him holding hands and flashing his energizing smile as he walked through and up many aisles, playing some tasty tunes on his melodica in between.

Batiste is anything but an artist who follows the rules or is dependent on a specific set list. The Bowl show was less a normal album promotion task, because after his recent World Music Radio album release, but rather an intuitive and improvised excursion, including a piano solo that leads from Chopin to his sweet ballad “Butterfly” and beyond.

Part soul man, part disinterested preacher, part public-reared musical prodigy, Batiste is a great source of inspiration in a time that desperately needs just that.

Further adventures on a rich musical path

Costa Rican born drummer/composer/bandleader Luis Muñoz may currently hail from Arizona, but his nearly fifty years as an active and restlessly creative musical force in Santa Barbara seem to give him permanent honorary status. When he returns to his old hometown on Sunday at SOhO (and Friday night at Lost Chords in Solvang), Muñoz comes with a locally rooted band—singer Lois Mahalia, guitarist Dan Zimmerman, bassist Randy Tico and keyboardist George Friedenthal—and an impressive new album, Shimmering Pathto add to an amazing discography. As well as being available through the usual digital outlets near you, the album will also be released on a stylish, audiophile LP in limited edition red vinyl.

While previous albums dealt with Muñoz’s roots in the Latin jazz fusion area and more recently focused more on vocal pieces, Shimmering Path takes one or more different perspectives and is less interested in standard jazz structures. The sonic clarity and the fine balance of atmospheres were shaped in a studio that is common for Muñoz, the Beagle Studio in Santa Barbara, with the big-eared sound engineer Emmet Sargeant at the controls.

Critical response so far has included an appearance on NPR’s “Best New Music” spotlight last month, and its intriguing mix of ambient qualities, art-pop twists, and hard-to-categorize nature sounds beguile and soothe. “En El Jardín de la Plenitud” opens the stylistically diverse seven-track album on a generous note. It’s a leisure piece with Muñoz on keyboard and percussion and the wonderful Tom Buckner on soprano saxophone — seemingly channeling Wayne Shorter and emphasizing the Weather Report-esque qualities Muñoz has often tapped into over the years. Perhaps the crowning track is “Crescent Moon,” a slow and hypnotically luminous piece that features Mahalia in subtle, layered vocal splendor. The song revolves around the quicksilver color shifts from minor to major and back, sliding into a major vocal that falls “rather on the optimistic side.”

“My Love,” which features trumpeter Jonathan Dane as a contrast to Mahalia’s loose jazz-pop approach (with hints of Sade), flows smoothly into “August,” which features guitarist Zimmerman playing a restrained and fluid solo with echoes of Jeff Beck and Allan Holdsworth (in smooth slow motion). Bassist Tico’s fretless bass skills are also on display, another welcome echo of the late ’70s fusion idiom.

Slow-cooked gospel spirits emerge on the beautiful “River of Love,” which Mahalia is a natural on, and are accompanied by fitting gospel influences from Jim Calire’s B-3 organ part and Bill Flores’ pedal steel guitar (think “Sacred Steel”), as well as the one-woman choir with multi-tracked vocals from Shawn Thies.

In contrast to the more lyrical and atmospheric elements of much of the album, things get edgier with the fast drum part – à la “drum and bass” – on “The Three Season”. Angularity and angst end the sequence in the prog-rock mini-epic “Lords of War”. Mahalia stretches out with some melismatic solo laments, implicitly lamenting the scourge of warmongers in the past and the terrible present.

Shimmering Path represents another dimension in Muñoz’s long-standing musical adventure.