Ocote Soul Sounds: The Ocote Way

Adrian Quesada is the man behind the bombastic funk of Grupo Fantasma and its alter ego, Brownout. When not leading those groups, performing at Super Bowl parties thrown by iconic genius Prince, and occasionally doubling as The Purple One's backing band at impromptu gigs in Austin, TX and Las Vegas, NV, the Austin, TX-based Quesada somehow finds time to share song ideas digitally with the never-stationary Perna. A founding member of the Afrobeat orchestra Antibalas, Perna has added his flute and saxophone to recordings from the likes of TV on the Radio, Scarlett Johansson and DJ Logic.

Coconut Rock is, by far, Ocote's best record to date, showcasing the growth of the band as, well, a band. Whereas 2007's The Alchemist Manifesto (ESL) was smoke-filled rooms and psilocybin dreams, Coconut Rock is dense layers of horns and percussion, Axelrod on vacation in Tijuana or Mandrill in the bomb shelter with Madlib. "Vampires" recalls the proto-raps of Gil Scott-Heron, "The Return of the Freak" shadows the pimp walk of Curtis Mayfield}'s "Superfly." <br /><br /> Both Quesada and Perna were kind enough to answer some questions for All About Jazz: Quesada in person at a coffee shop just minutes from the home-turned-studio where Grupo Fantasma is currently writing their next record; and Perna, true to form, via email. <br /><br /> <strong>The History</strong> <P> Ocote Soul Sounds' roots go back to Perna's days working with the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, as they were called at the time, the name since shortened to Antibalas, in New York City. <br /><br /> "[Ocote Soul Sounds] was a name I came up with in 2001 when I started writing songs that didn't really fit in the rest of the Antibalas repertoire," Perna explains. "It sort of became the umbrella name for little random stuff I did, from a 45 on Bobbito Garcia's Fruitmeat label to a digital folk EP that I made 100 copies of called <em>Electric Tides</em>. I would do two or three shows a year around that time in New York, backed by guys from Antibalas, The Dap Kings and El Michels Affair." <br /><br /> [Ocote] took on another phase in 2004 when I linked up with Adrian Quesada in Austin, and we put together material for an album. We had both donefour or five songs independently, and put them together along with a few joint collaborations and we had an instant album [2005's <em>El Ni&#241;o y El Sol</em> (ESL)]. It was unexpectedly well received and picked up by the Thievery Corporation guys for the ESL label."<br /><br /><img src=https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/2009/ocotesoulsounds_coconutrock_jk.jpg space=2 class="f-right"width=150 alt="Ocote Soul Sounds">"Because we really didn't know how this project would turn out, if we'd expand to a full band or not, it made sense to bill it as 'Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada,'" Quesada adds. "It has a better ring than Martin Perna and Adrian Quesada. Still, when we perform live we just call it 'Ocote Soul Sounds.'" <br /><br /> Regardless of the name, the nexus of Ocote's sound is undeniably the inspiring, and almost freaky, musical connection between the group's two leaders. "The most difficult thing is getting together," Perna says. "Even though Adrian and I both theoretically live in Austin, our times here rarely overlap and our commitments here leave precious little time to get together. I think there is definitely some ESP happening between us because when we do get together in the studio, the ideas flow pretty freely and usually one of us is able to put the finishing touches on the other's ideas to make it a song we're happy with." <br /><br /> "Martin travels quite a bit so we don't spend all that much time in the same room. So he'll send me sketches he has via email," says Quesada. Which brings to mind an interesting dichotomy: while Ocote Soul Sounds compositions begin with the digital sharing of two musical minds via the web, the actual music looks back, not only to the Latin funk and soul explosion of the '60s and '70s, but much further back to the Yoruban chants and layers of polyrthythmic percussion that drive <em>Coconut Rock</em>. Like Perna's work promoting sustainable living alternatives, Ocote Soul Sounds music attempts to address the present by looking to the past for lessons on how to build a better future.<br /><br /><P><strong>The Record</strong> <P> All of Ocote's records, if anything, have shown the growth of the band. Like their songs themselves, the group's albums have developed from sketches of what could potentially be, to fully orchestrated brilliance.<br /><br /><img src=/photos/2009/ocotesoulsounds_1_jk.jpg space=2 class="f-right"width=220 alt="Ocote Soul Sounds">"The difference between <em>Alchemist Manifesto</em> and [the new one] is this one is more focused. <em>El Nino y El Sol</em> came together... magically? I don't really know how&#151;a lot of it was already recorded by Martin. With [<em>The Alchemist Manifesto</em>] we set out to record a lot more but because of scheduling it was hard to do so it ended up not as well thought out. It's a good record and I know a lot of people like it but it's a lot of stuff that was just laying around and sounded completely different on an album." <br /><br /> [<em>Coconut Rock</em>] is the record we've spent the most time on so I think the songs are fleshed out more. You mentioned David Axelrod, who did a lot of big arrangements and compositions where everything was real well thought out and super orchestrated. This is the first album where we actually had the time and the resources to actually flesh out ideas. So it's not just grooves&#151;all the songs start with a groove but this is the first time we actually had the time to sit down and turn them into real songs, to call up our friends who play instruments we can't play. In that sense, this is the most composed record." <br /><br /> "I wasn't going for that [Axelrod-like style] specificall,y although I do admire his productions, both under his own name and other stuff he did. Adrian definitely has a very cinematic ear and brings a lot of that aesthetic to the sound. In the back of my mind I am constantly thinking of the dancers&#151;you can hear that in the 'Cockroach Peoples,' 'Coconut Rock' and 'Prince of Peace'" <br /><br /> Working within a community of musicians that includes members of Antibalas, Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, Perna and Quesada have had no problems finding experienced musicians to help them actualize their ideas. <br /><br /> "John Speice, who plays with the Austin-version of the live band, he played a huge part in this record," Quesada admits. "We wanted to incorporate more of the live element and the way the band is sounding on this record and he is the one who came in and was the glue that pulled that together. He plays drums and percussion on almost every song so [<em>Coconut Rock</em>] has more of a live feel than the last few, where some of the drums were samples or random percussion that we could round up. He's really the third member on this record." <br /><br /> The biggest problem for Perna and Quesada seems to be the final step in the music making process&#151;figuring out how in the world to play these songs live. <br /><br /> "Brownout, Grupo and Antibalas are such live machines, huge bands that beat you over the head with music. And because they come from a live setting, all three of those bands' music is based on getting people dancing," Quesada says. "With Ocote, that need to get people dancing goes out the window, allowing us to do whatever we want really. The music has more of a cinematic quality because songs are built around sounds and not necessarily what works live. <br /><br /> "We don't play a lot of our songs live," Quesada jokes. "But we have no sense of that when writing. Afterwards, we go back and figure out what we can play live. We just went on tour with Thievery Corporation again. They're more electronic-based and Martin and I come from a live background and little by little we're realizing that short of hiring an orchestra and taking all those people on tour with us, we're going to have to start using a sampler or computers. I love watching a live band trying to recreate the record.<br /><br /><a href=http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=29692 target=_blank><img src=https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/2009/ocotesoulsounds_thealchemistmanifesto_jk.jpg space=2 class="f-right"width=150 alt="Ocote Soul Sounds"></a>"There is some material that is heavy on the studio production, and we've either chosen not to do it live or to do some sort of reduced version of it with the instrumentation we have live," Perna continues. At the band's most recent gig at the loungey 6th St. bar Momo's in, Austin, TX, that live set up consisted of two guitars, Quesada and Arturo Torres, bass, congas, the aforementioned John Speice on drums, Perna's flute and baritone sax, and a second saxophone. "I've been learning Ableton Live and am going to experiment a little bit with integrating some pre-recorded stuff (both musical and ambient sounds) into the live set. If it can work organically with much drama, cool. If not, I'll leave it in the bag." <br /><br /> <strong>The Roots</strong> <P> Two years ago I had the pleasure of working with Adrian Quesada at the Fun Fun Fun Fest music festival in Austin. As Quesada's Grupo Fantasma shimmied their way through a silky smooth set of horn-heavy cumbia, salsa and funk, I stood at the back of the stage alongside Dead Milkmen lead singer Rodney Anonymous, his band having played a reunion show at the festival the night before. Rodney was ecstatic, literally freaking about this band "playing the sort of Chicago funk my father used to listen to." <br /><br /> After Grupo's set, I introduced the two, and Quesada returned Anonymous' elation with the admission that he could probably still play guitar to every Dead Milkemen song, himself a reformed skateboarding, trouble making punk rocker. What struck me most about this moment was the sort of inter-generational conversation that was going on: a punk rock icon praising a musician who is himself a child of the punk rock and hip hop movements for playing music that his father enjoyed. Again, looking to the past to make music for the future. The Ocote Way.<br /><br /><img src=/photos/2009/ocotesoulsounds_3_jk.jpg width=454 alt="Ocote Soul Sounds"><P><br /><br />"Beyond digging deeper and straying from the obvious stuff that everyone is doing and listening to, what punk rock, and bands like the Dead Milkmen, showed me and my skate punk friends was the do-it-yourself approach," Quesada explains. "I remember looking at album covers and realizing these guys had done this themselves, literally drawn the covers by hand. And the albums sounded shitty, I mean comparatively they just didn't have the same budget. What I took away from those years and that music was really taking it upon yourself to make things happen. Keeping that attitude. And also really the rawness, the rawness of that music&#151;aesthetically the music was raw and had energy and all that stuff that's fun when you're young and causing trouble." <br /><br />"I think there are definitely a lot of our peers who are inspired by 60s and 70s aesthetics, from Dap Kings to El Michels to Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, to the West Coast guys like Connie Price, the Lions, Orgone," Perna adds. "A lot of us grew up in the late '80s, early '90s on hip hop that was completely built on a lot of this old funk music. For me, that's what I liked most about the hip hop&#151;it was always much less about the lyricism for me (with a few exceptions) and more about the beats. It was in X-Clan that I heard Fela Kuti for the first time. It was the saxophone hook in Pete Rocks "Troy" that made me want to play saxophone. When I started digging for records and buying mixtapes with the original music, I forgot about hip hop altogether. By that time sampling laws had changed anyway and a lot of hip hop's connection with music of the past was severed." <br /><br /> Artists like {{Fela Kuti, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Sun Ra and Parliament/Funkadelic were the freaks and weirdoes of their era, much like the Rodney Anonymous' and Flavor Flav's of Perna and Quesada's adolescence. As music fans, something always draws us to artists who seem a little odd, the tortured genius or eccentric entertainer. "The Return of the Freak" as Perna puts it.

In addition to the punk rock aesthetic of Quesada, and the mutual love and admiration of the golden era late '80s hip-hop, Ocote's sound is peppered with the chants and percussion of Yoruban religion. "A lot of the chanting that you hear on songs like 'Pan, Chamba y Techo' and 'Coconut Rock' comes from Perna's background in Yoruba. The origins of some of the vocals is obviously African, Yoruban, but the influence actually comes from 70s bands like Mandrill, bands that didn't have a lead singer, they just had a bunch of dudes who sang."

The Future

With a solid band in place for the first time, Quesada must now find time to balance the ever-hectic schedule of Grupo Fantasma and Brownout with the touring demands of Ocote Soul Sounds.

"More and more I lean towards staying home and making records but it's hard these days, especially with bands the size of Grupo and Ocote, to make any money. You just have to play and play a lot," Quesada says. "For me personally I like the fact that Grupo Fantasma and Ocote can kinda divide and conquer and play different parts of the country. Now there's an Ocote band and it's great 'cause we don't have to defer to any other band and its schedule. The band is growing in confidence and developing its own sound."

No doubt, Coconut Rock is documentation of a band finally comfortable in its own skin, finally acknowledging its status as a "real band," no longer a pet project of two staggeringly talented musicians with too many ideas in their heads and not enough outlets to explore them.

"Every musician who gets to a certain point in his/her journey begins to confront questions of identity, roots and core values," Perna reflects. "I think that is where we are right now with the music. It is a challenge to try to articulate where we are at, where we are from, and were we want to go in our own words."

Ocote Soul Sounds, Coconut Rock (ESL, 2009)
Ocote Soul Sounds, The Alchemist Manifesto (ESL, 2007)

Ocote Soul Sounds, El Niño y El Sol (ESL, 2005)

Photo Credits

Courtesy of Ocote Soul Sounds

Comments