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Overview, OZOMATLI:
Cultural Ambassadors – Salsa – Samba – Dancehall - Funk
A Bridgepoint Education Summer Pops Concert - Subscribe Now!
Sunday, August 21
Matthew Garbutt, conductor
They are the voice of their city and citizens of the world. Celebrated Los Angeles culture-mashers Ozomatli join San Diego Symphony for one night only. Their music is an urban-Latino-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, samba and funk. From New Orleans to Jamaica and beyond, Ozomatli will take you on a trip around the world.
All seats are $25! General Admission!
(If you have not visited Summer Pops before, most seating is in Cabaret tables which each seat four. As this is a General Admission concert, please be prepared to share your table if your party is less than four.)
Note: There will be a post-concert event with Ozomatli in the Embarcadero's VIP Area. Admission to this event is $20 and needs to be purchased separately. Only Ozomatli concert buyers may purchase this post-concert event. Hurry, spaces are limited!
Important note: Cameras are not allowed in the concert venue before or during the Ozomatli concert. Cameras must be checked in at the entrance before the concert, but may be retrieved from the Customer Service Tent just prior to the post-concert event.
Also, please be aware of our other venue policies: 1) Smoking is not allowed inside the concert venue, per the United Port of San Diego. 2) No alcohol may be brought into the venue, per the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Wine and other spirits are available for purchase inside the concert venue. 3) For the safety of all patrons, no glassware is allowed inside the venue. A complete list of policy guidelines can be found on the Summer Pops FAQ page.
Artists, 
In their fifteen years together as a band, celebrated Los Angeles culture-mashers Ozomatli have gone from being hometown heroes to being named U.S. State Department Cultural Ambassadors. Ozomatli has always juggled two key identities. They are the voice of their city and they are citizens of the world.
Their music — a notorious urban-Latino-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, dancehall and cumbia, samba and funk, merengue and comparsa, East LA R&B and New Orleans second line, Jamaican ragga and Indian raga— has long followed a key mantra: it will take you around the world by taking you around L.A. This has never been truer for Ozo than it is in 2011. More than ever before, the band is both of the world and of L.A.
Originally formed to play at a Los Angeles labor protest over a decade ago, Ozomatli spent some of their early days participating in everything from earthquake prep “hip hop ghetto plays” at inner-city elementary schools to community activist events, protests, and city fundraisers. Ever since, they have been synonymous with their city: their music has been taken up by both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Clippers, they recorded the street-view travelogue “City of Angels” as a new urban anthem, and they were featured as part of the prominent L.A. figures imaging campaign “We Are 4 L.A.” on NBC. They have the distinction of headlining the Hollywood Bowl twice in 2008 and 2010.
In recognition of their efforts towards Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles officially declared April 23rd, 2010 as “Ozomatli Day”, as well as every following April 23rd, in perpetuity. Ozomatli were also recipients of the 2010 Local Heroes Award by Los Angeles PBS station KCET-TV, recognizing the band’s longstanding accomplishments and community service throughout Southern California. “This band could not have happened anywhere else but L.A.,” saxophonist and clarinetist Ulises Bella has said. “Man, the tension of it, the multiculturalism of it. L.A. is like, we’re bonded by bridges.”
In 2007, the reach and power of that voice went to new global heights. The band had long been a favorite of international audiences-playing everywhere from Japan to North Africa and Australia - and their music had always been internationalist in its scope, seamlessly blending and transforming traditions from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (what other band could record a song once described as “Arabic jarocho dancehall”?), but that year they entered the global arena in a different way.
They were invited by the U.S. State Department to serve as official Cultural Ambassadors on a series of government-sponsored international tours to Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, tours that linked Ozomatli to a tradition of cultural diplomacy that also includes the esteemed likes of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.
In places like Tunisia, India, Jordan, and Nepal, Ozo didn’t just play rousing free public concerts, but offered musical workshops and master classes and visited arts centers, summer camps, youth rehabilitation centers, and even a Palestinian refugee camp. In the case of Nepal, the band’s trip was part of a celebration of the country’s newly ratified peace accord and they arrived with a direct message: “different instruments but one rhythm, together we can make a prosperous Nepal.” Their concert, which drew over 14,000 people, was a historic one-Ozo were the first Western band to do a concert in Nepal and the event was the country’s first peaceful mass gathering that was not a protest or religious ceremony.
In 2009, Ozomatli traveled to Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand performing free concerts and extending humanitarian outreach, including HIV and AIDS care clinics, visits to schools for the blind and deaf, orphanages, Methadone clinics, and outreach programs to refugees and disadvantaged youth. In 2010, Ozomatli journeyed to the earthquake zone in Dujiangyan, China. Ozo’s outreach in this area focused on extending the value of music education to children in orphanages, schools for migrant workers families, and schools for the handicapped.
Ozomatli were honored to help celebrate the Boston Pops 125th Anniversary, performing songs from the band’s latest release Fire Away as well as Ozo classics from their previous discs, accompanied by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ozomatli ended the 2010 calendar year with a huge Quinceañera Party at Club Nokia in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, celebrating their 15th year together as a band. Ozomatli has spent those 15 years working diligently to spread its message of peace, communication and understanding through music, with a long standing tradition of performing for children all over the world, from the schools of North St. Louis to the orphanages of Southeast Asia.
