Overview | The Social gathering Gospel In keeping with Trombone Shorty and Associates

On the fun-loving face of it, final Friday’s four-hour/four-act Santa Barbara Bowl live performance, with Trombone Shorty as headliner, provided heaping parts of the emotional high quality promised by opener Mavis Staples: “constructive vibrations.” Timing was in its favor. Regardless of the shortage of cultural hyperlinks to something Previous Spanish Days-related, the escapist Fiesta spirit was buzzing on the Bowl’s hillside perch.

On a deeper and extra musical and stylistic degree, the night amounted to an inadvertent revue-style present with embedded historical past and regional classes connected, on the thematic turf of American musical roots and shoots.

Shorty himself is steeped in tradition from his hometown of New Orleans, as he bridges conventional Crescent Metropolis music along with his latter-day stylings. Pedal steel-mastering dynamo Robert Randolph, inheritor to the nice, underrated “sacred metal” world, opened the night with a strong gospel-meets-Hendrix gusto. The theme of gospel because the seedbed of a lot American music continued with the nice octogenarian gospel queen Staples, who closed her scene-stealing set with a fifty-plus year-old traditional, “I’ll Take You There.” As a solo artist and member of the Staple Singers, Mavis reminded us that “we’ve been taking you there for 75 years.” True, that.

And sure, it’s additionally true that Ziggy Marley’s base takes us right down to Jamaica, however reggae has been totally embraced and embedded in American music, as witnessed by this week’s two-night Bowl stand with pop-reggae staples Rebelution and Iration (with Isla Vistan origin tales, as well).

Marley, the celebrated son of reggae deity Bob Marley, assuredly took the stage along with his tight band, taking some inventive detours away from normal reggae strikes and cliches. A lithe and dancing presence onstage, Marley synced snugly along with his background singers, overlaying such classics as “Private Revolution” and “Circle of Peace.” A extra lineage-tending pinnacle of the set got here along with his personalised preparations of the Bob Marley anthems “Is that this Love” and “Get Up Stand Up,” which his father carried out in a live performance on this very stage in 1979, immortalized on a reside album and video doc. The Marley title and the Bowl are timelessly intertwined.

Shorty, whose broad fanbase has lengthy included Santa Barbarans in its large combine, delivered what we count on of him and his scorching band, specifically a tautly-machined expression of N’Awlins tradition, however by means of a funked-up fashionable filter. Entrance and middle, Trombone (and trumpet) Shorty, aka Troy Andrews, steered his ace seven-piece band by means of a festive-funky hour of energy.

Paradoxically, the set’s opening sequence — nodding to the ominous introduction of 2001: A Area Odyssey with its use of Strauss’ landmark Additionally sprach Zarathustra — has by chance was a nod to the summer season cultural phenom that’s Barbie, which additionally used the prelude ploy. Shorty channeled his unstoppable power and “constructive vibrations” right into a potent present filled with “riff swapping” along with his nimble bandmates and a stroll across the Bowl’s aisles whereas in trombone-ly movement.

Although not a lot of a singer — he correctly relied on his backup singers to inject fireplace into such tunes as Prince’s “Let’s Go Loopy” — his magnetic charisma makes up for any weaker facets of his work. He closed the official set with the ecstatic new-ish tune “Lifted” and imparted a stylistic hyperlink again to the awakening gospel spirit of Randolph and Staples.

If Shorty has a shortcoming, it might be that his daring command of his devices means that he would profit from extra advanced musical contexts — jazz chord adjustments, as an illustration. However for now, he’s the king of a profitable feelgood social gathering of his personal devising, and we’re prepared social gathering individuals, particularly on a stunning August evening on the Bowl.