Graduation, births, marriage... who knows. There are some few obvious landmarks in life that signify change, growth, goodbyes and the next step. For those of us "Gainesvilleanos" who decide on less mundane ones, the end of Umoja is certainly the end of an era.
There are some of us who love music, and not only music, but the feelings evoked in a diaspora of joy and talent that is the inevitably sweaty mix of an Umoja crowd. It is Afro-beat, it is Latin, it is Jazz and sometimes even Funk. At some point I was sure they were Reggae. Two saxophones, a trombone, a trumpet, bass, congas, guacharacas, keyboards, guitar, accordion... anything else?
Some of them have left, some stayed, some just stuck and some dissolved... it is a gigantic mass that attracts musicians and lets them go with the equal ease with which it brought them. That unequivocally selfless love that is not co-dependent; that will always take in from whomever wishes to contribute.
There was a time a little less than four years ago, I recall well, when this eclectic group of musicians got together and decided that each could play to his own tune yet at the same time, like a fruit salad or Skittles, together but not mixed, independent but packed in one tight package that was that stage at 1982, or the Side Bar. It was fun... not yet inspiring, but different and provoking curiosity, especially for us Hispanics who could not help but wonder at this group of Jewish gringos plus Colombian, who could not very well dance to the music but felt it so much more than any of us.
It was a curiosity.
Four years later I can say that in the only two constants in my college life were Krishna lunch and Umoja. They got better... oh so much better, without losing their childlike innocence though, not taking it too seriously nor too lightly. They stopped being a curiosity and became an object of awe. It is the only group that could not sicken me and my melomaniac friends, because a show was not only a sensory experience but a soul-lifting one. It is safe to say that the only place where we Colombians felt like dancing in Gainesville was at their shows, in spite of it being Afro-beat, in spite of its instrumentality and its lack of pop-like attitude. The bond between band members transcended into their music, hence to the atmosphere and floated on to the audience,embracing us in a bubble, making us part of this magical thing that could superimpose the fabulousness of a trumpet solo onto cultural barriers.
An Umoja show is one of the best places to see all different types of people, usually divided in their own cliques, united under that supreme force that is genuinely good music. No one can keep from dancing, or attempting to dance, or simply convulsing to a certain conga rhythm.
Friday's show, their supposedly last show in their birth city of Gainesville, was like a typical good bye for me; simply a denial. I took it like any other show of the so many that I have been to. No sentimentality. And I am sure most of the band members did so as well. Because we all knew, all of us sweating in that show that sold out way ahead of time, that this is not an "adios" but simply an "hasta luego." This band is not like others.. it can't die. It is a growing thing, a living thing, a plant, an ideal, a place, a time... and abstract masses like that don't have finite endings.
Yet I did have all the flashbacks... to the original members, to the lack of coordination, to David Borenstein's saxophone-playing faces and Sebastian's poem readings. From covers of "La tierra" to a narration of the Wayuu massacre. There is story behind it, there is feeling. And seeing so much talent together simply makes joy. It is pure and good joy.
And the Common Grounds will certainly not be the burial ground of such monstrous joy.
