Xingolati: Long Beach, CA to Ensenada, Mexico 10.14-17.05

College is a time for dreaming. It’s a time for expanding your imagination and fantasizing about the life that lies in your future. Anything is possible when you are in college. Your dreams will open up for you, your direction will be seamless and your path an easy one. You will marry beautiful, you will travel, you will make a lot of money doing things that you love, and you will change the world doing so.

I hung out with a particularly interesting crowd in college. A lot of big thinkers and eclectic ideas. A lot of musicians. One particular aspiring musician, Derrick (he actually turned out to be quite the horn player) had this idea in college that he used to talk about often.

I never really got it. The idea was to have concerts and performances and make each one about something. Rather than settling for a night of just great music and good people, he wanted to inject good messages and ideas through these nights. You had an audience there to see music, give him something more was his idea. Change the world one venue at a time, one crowd after another.

In college and to this day, I see a lot of live music, and with it I have seen a lot of interesting ideas. Big thinkers playing music and spouting everything from community to politics at us. It happens between songs and in lyrics, sometimes even in costumes or signs around the stage. I thought that I had come closer over the years to seeing Derrick’s vision take shape.

Well this past weekend, I realized just how far from it I had always been. I went on the Xingolati [zing-o-lat-e] Groove Cruise, and I tell you, I now understand. If you go to the Xingolati website, they will tell you that Xingolati is the “blending of worlds.” – I saw Penn and Teller once. They were doing some elaborate card trick, combining the talents of each of them as the non-mute of the two, Penn, explained that for an ensemble to be successful, each person must contribute something unique. But for the partnership to be worthwhile, the sum must be better than the whole of its parts. Xingolati had so many parts, each one amazing on its own. But when brought together, it just might have changed the world.

This was more than a music festival, this was more than a five star cruise, this was more than a performance based nightclub complete with acrobats, DJs, contortionists, abstract artists and otherwise. This was more than the most intense hotel party in history, more than a Broadway burlesque show, more than a wine tasting or a poker tournament with some world renowned musicians, more than a venue to see some of the craziest people wearing some of the craziest outfits, doing some of the craziest things, this was simply: Xingolati.

I have been struggling since my return to real life to explain to people what it was that I spent this long weekend doing out on the Pacific Ocean with 2000 other participants in what I am deeming the greatest and most successful experiment of all time.

I usually just start by listing some of the things that I saw while wandering the 10 or so floors both inside and outside that the boat had for us to enjoy. I saw people dressed as gorillas sunning by the pool, I saw full on lap dances performed in the formal dining halls, I saw impromptu jam sessions, by the pool, in lobbies, in hallways, once even on top of a piano. I saw “that balloon guy,” who wandered the boat in outfits made of nothing but balloons, both inflated and not, making some very impressive creatures came to life with nothing more than a request. I saw party elevators – that’s right, party elevators, I saw the Crossing the Line Ritual that is something that must be seen to be believed (more to come on it later), I saw a couple doing Cirque-De-Soleil worthy maneuvering in a random lobby, with at least a hundred enamored fellow onlookers, I saw endless costumes and friendly people. And none of that was even on stage.

I went on this Groove Cruise expecting it to be all about the music. I knew that there would be a big party surrounding it, and amazing food and comfortable beds. I knew that I would bump into amazing musicians all over the boat; I knew that I would see some crazy pairings of musicians as well, as is usually the trend at music festivals. But the music was what was bringing me there, and I assumed that it was the same with the majority of the people coming on this excursion into the Pacific. I was way off.

Music was a big part of this weekend, but it was by no means the ever-present driving force, as is the case with most music festivals. I have never been any where with so much energy. You wandered the evenings from stage to stage, floor to floor, and there was typically 4-5 different things going on, at least according to the schedule. But that was only the tip of some amazing, tie-died, revolving, and ever growing iceberg. Everywhere you went on the boat, it was just alive. Just wandering the upstairs 24-hour dining hall complete with dessert table and pizza bar, could be hours of entertainment. You saw people who just needed a break sitting alone, weary eyed or in large and loud groups. You saw musicians who needed a refresher between going to sit in with yet another band that evening. You saw people who looked like they just stepped out of a Disney horror flick, crazy hair, leather, full 7-foot bear costumes. The only thing strange this weekend was normalcy.

At one point, I walked out of one theatre and was heading to the upstairs poolside deck and I found Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon fame picking with a band. I spent a while there, and then continued on in my venture.

While I have stated that music was only one part of the event, I don’t want you to misunderstand. There was still amazing music, virtually non-stop, from mid-afternoon until at least 5 in the morning all three nights. I caught everything that I could. Picked favorites, then left them to see other bands I had heard good things about, wandering into amazing jams and beautiful sounds and mind-blowing landscapes. I didn’t see everything, but I did my best.

My musical weekend started with the Everyone Orchestra. I had heard and read good things, but had no idea what to truly expect. It started with Matt Butler, the visionary and creator, and Jamie Janover on stage, the latter of course playing the hammer dulcimer as only he can. Butler, who wound up being the only one on the stage that eventually contained no less than a dozen musicians, was the only one who I had never seen before. He was playing drum kit and didgeridoo. It was an impressive feat. But of course, it was only a beginning. Throughout the next few hours they were joined by Vince Herman, Joe Craven (DGQ), Jamie Mansfield (Jazz Mandolin Project), Rob Wasserman, G Love, half of Particle, members of Hamsa Lila and Mojo and the Vibration Army. Different people took over control throughout the set, and the audience was very much a part of it.

It set the stage for the rest of the weekend. I have seen a lot of bands and festivals strive to make the audience an integral part of the show. Bands claiming that they feed off of the energy of the crowd. As a musician, I can understand this easily. Never though, have I seen it work so well. Never have I seen such a seamless interaction between stage and floor, between performer and audience. I have already stated that this weekend was all about the crowd; I just wanted to reiterate that these Freaks did not leave it at the door when they went to see music. They brought the Freak with them, much to the delight of the band.

Following Everyone in the Normandie Lounge was Medeski, Martin and Wood. These guys came out swinging. They came out throwing as tight of any chaos I have ever heard. They dove in heard first to the noise that they control so well, their signature sound roaring through the crowd who was roaring right back at them. I was however a bit shocked with the size of the crowd. One of the things that Xingolati bragged on their website was intimate crowds. I was picturing MMW, a big draw for me, to have a vast majority of the 2000 passengers, not to mention plenty fellow musicians and artists. It wasn’t even close. The night had really just begun and I had not fully digested the magnitude of options. In other venues throughout the boat there were a slew of other things to see. Rising San Diego stars Al Howard and the K23 Orchestra were wowing new crowds in the Leonardo Lounge with Al’s crowd-controlling spoken word over the K23’s straight up rock, funk, jazz thing that they do like few others.

Delta Nove, another up and coming So Cal phenom was getting their “funk, Brazilian samba, jazz, afro-beat, blues and rock” thing on in the Queen Mary Lounge.

But much to my surprise, the majority of the crowd seemed to be up on the Lido Deck enjoying the DJ stylings of Bass Nectar. My cousin and I headed upstairs after MMW to get some air, and we found ourselves leaning over a railing looking down on the craziest dance party that I have ever witnessed. There were lights and hula-hoops and costumes and that was all on the dance floor.

I think that when the promoter, Guy Grand, talked about a “blending of two worlds,” it was this world with the Jam scene that they had in mind. It obviously came to encapsulate so much more, but it was my first icy dip into this new world that I partook in often over the rest of the weekend.

In case this wasn’t enough for a group of people who had spent all day getting to the boat, going through customs, and in some cases (mine anyway) working that morning, this music was then followed by late night sets. Particle was in the Normandie and Perpetual Groove (P Groove) was up on the deck and throughout this entire night, there was an ever revolving group off Djs spinning in the Rex Dance Club.

I went to bed overwhelmed and excited that I had two more nights, full with whatever they had in store for me, to follow.

I woke up the next afternoon and we were in port in Ensenada. We spent the day in Mexico. It was a very mellow afternoon, people recuperating from the night before and preparing for the night to come. We got off, walked through the streets, looked out on the bay, and headed back to the boat. People read and played acoustic guitars and ate. And ate. They ate well.

Dinners at the two fancy dining halls on board were group seating. They would sit 8-10 around big tables. If you had that many with you, you sat as a group, if not you were paired with first come, first serve. This was yet another great community builder. As people sat drinking wine, eating lobster and steak and Baked Alaska, they got to know their neighbors aboard. We met a lot of interesting people during these group dining gourmet meals. It was of course though just one of many, many places where people got to know each other over the weekend.

An example, at one point, in the midst of the chaos that was Friday night I went down to my room to get a sweatshirt. I got on the elevator after being surrounded by sounds and sights for hours straight. The elevator was completely silent and two other people had walked on with me. We looked at each other and started laughing. We introduced ourselves, explained exclamations and headed our way. That was my Friday night elevator experience. My Saturday night elevator experiences were far grander. By this point we realized that we were controlling the weekend and people started to get creative. I walked onto one elevator and 4 out of the 5 members of San Diego’s Tapwater had set up shop. There was an upright bassist, a percussionist, an electric keyboard and a banjo player. They were jamming and there were 7 or 8 other people on this particular glass elevator with them. Some were on their way to another show, some had found all of the show that they needed right there and were simply along for the ride.

Later on I got into another, slightly more isolated elevator. There was a pink boa hung across the door, as a ribbon might be to get into an LA nightclub. We went under and stepped in. There was a white sheet hanging from the ceiling. There were glowstick lights hanging on the walls. In the corner on the floor was a guy that I had seen all weekend wandering around the boat with a red wagon. In it he had electronic equipment and a keyboard. Everywhere he went, he had a strange ethereal techno sound not more than an arm length behind him. People were free styling into microphones that were plugged into his amp. People were making vocal percussions and clapping along. People were riding the elevator up and down as it went, not wanting to leave this particular “party elevator.” As the door opened and we were about to get off, someone simply waiting for a ride saw the scene and exclaimed, “Hey look, party elevator!” as if Alec Trebek had just informed him that he had struck Double Jeopardy. He was excited for sure, but sounded as if he had been looking for this particular party all night. That is what was so shocking, at some point nothing was shocking. It was nothing more than was to be expected at this point in the weekend.

While there was plenty going on all over the boat on Saturday night, some of the craziest “official” experiences I had all weekend were on Saturday night. One was the Flaming Lips and the other was the [b/b]Crossing the Line ritual accompanied by Mutaytor. And it would be unfair not to mention That 1 Guy.

Every one I know who has ever seen the Flaming Lips has informed me that they are the best live show out there. I was totally prepared for them to be like some great movie that is built up so high by previous audiences that it could never live up to the hype. I was prepared to enjoy the show, but thought that I had braced myself for it to be good. It was so far above and beyond anything that I could have expected that I was shocked that my friends ever stopped talking about them. These guys are more than a live band, they are a full on performance. It started with noise over a full movie screen. Then a 9′ dragon started working his way through the crowd, in fact, probably the largest crowd in one single place throughout the weekend. He was wobbling back and forth and people were dancing with him. It was some intro to what was about to be a mind-blowing couple of hours. These guys came on stage loud and ready to go.

Now many bands have a lighting system. Some bands let fans onstage to dance and party and be a part of the evening. The Flaming Lips had no less than 8 people on each side of the stage in full costume holding lights and being the light show throughout the entire performance. They danced in unison and shined lights in the crowd and in the air. Wayne Coyne threw confetti and suddenly balloons were everywhere. Then there were balloons showing up that could have contained no less than half of the band with instruments in tow rolling around over head. All of this was within the first 7 minutes that the guys were onstage.

They played all of their “hits,” if they can be called such. We got Fight test, Yoshimi, Jelly and Do You Realize, along with a slew of other songs encapsulating a two-decade stretch and counting of a career. At one point, during one of Wayne’s many rants he pretty much summed up the weekend. He said that Xingolati was going to change the world. He said that there is only one this year. In five years there should be a hundred of them all over the country. It might have been a dream, but no one in that room wasn’t prepared to do everything in their power to see this particular dream take shape. It was really a performance like no other and I was thrilled to not leave even a little bit disappointed.

My cousin and I again wandered upstairs, above the Lido deck to look down on the madness pursuing. This was a band called Mutaytor. I had never heard of them, and was mostly looking to cool down after an intense set. No rest for the weary here though. These guys were a power house of energy and movement. At first listen I thought that it was several Djs spinning drum and bass. Then I looked up and realized that it was mostly organic and live and that there was a bassist and no less than a half dozen drummers on stage all wailing in their particular role. There were hula-hoopers on stage impressing us with feats of acrobatics and who knows what else.

This however was only the beginning for these guys. What came next changed the way that I will see art from here on out. I don’t know what it was and I don’t know how to explain it, but I will give a few tastes until you get a chance to see it for yourself. It was called the Crossing the Line Ritual (CLR). Mutaytor was the backing band and driving force, but beyond them, both on stage, on the dance floor, and on a newly constructed 30 foot triangular tower that had been built, there were no less than 30 to 40 other performers. I saw everything from scary and exhilarating acrobatics high above the ground floor to dancers and actors and performers and one guy who spent the whole time painting a statue, ie a girl with hands in the air throughout the performance wrapped in vines and little else. She was on a rolling platform and occasionally she would be moved throughout the stage, otherwise they focused on the task at hand. There were singers and a guy who looked like he just stepped out of a scene from the Matrix meets Star Trek who walked on to stage with all of the presence of a NASCAR accident and was then lifted 20 feet in the air, all the while connected to a dress like sheet that made it so that no matter how far up he went, you never saw ground below him. He simply grew. It was like a scene from Ghostbusters and it was chilling.

What was so amazing about the CLR was the amount of interesting and beautiful things going on all at once. I was standing a deck up watching the scenes unfold and as I sat, overwhelmed by a particular act of beauty, I moved my attention ever so slightly and realized that there were at least 1 dozen other things just as beautiful going on all around them. There was no focal point, rather everyone in the troupe, if that is what they were, were putting their all in to their particular dance, or scene or moment, creating the most amazing artistic landscape that I have ever witnessed first hand. I can say no more, see them if you can.

Although it seams hard to imagine, I saw several other amazing bands and performances on this particular evening. Amongst them was That 1 Guy, who I realized I had foolishly written off for years, as friends struggled to describe him, as just another cool one-man show. I have had no lack of cool one-man shows grouping up, I was practically weaned on Keller Williams, but nothing prepared me for That 1 Guy. Playing something he built entitled the Magic Pipes, he wowed the crowd with a disco, techno funk like I have never heard, much less seen before. This is another one that must be seen to be believed.

Along with my cousin, I went on this Groove Cruise with my roommate. At some point deep into Saturday night he made a comment that resonated. He said that he could no longer sit through, much less imagine, anything that wasn’t spectacular. Good music wasn’t cutting it this night, it had to be amazing. Fortunately there was no shortage of options. In fact, by Saturday night, my mantra for the rest of the weekend – which seemed to last forever, and still now I am having a hard time realizing that it is over – became “Above and Beyond.” It seemed to sum up everything that I saw, that I heard, that I witnessed. It seems to be the chief phrase that I use when I try and talk about this weekend.

Another amazing band that I “discovered” that night was Texas’ Olospo. They were a solid guitar, bass, drums and keys band led by an unbelievably powerful guitarist to the likes of which you don’t come cross very often. They played great covers and had solid originals, easily flowing between styles and genres. As can be imagined, they never got my full attention throughout this evening, but they are definitely a band that I would go see again.

And that was Saturday night.

The idea of Sunday had a slightly sobering effect, at least for me, who knew that this night could not go all night as had the previous two. I planned on taking the day as a chance to relax, read and sit by the pool. However, I got invited to a Hookah party in a suite that became so crowded that it quickly became difficult to move around. And yet somehow, this still seemed sobering in comparison to the rest of the weekend.

I caught RED, which was Rob Wasserman, and drums and bass from Particle. It was quite a nice way to sit and enjoy some technically proficient music in the afternoon as I so rarely get to do at home. At points in the set, the guitarist from P Groove sat in, along with DJ Logic and two female singers, one of whom was Wasserman’s daughter Sara. The talent certainly didn’t fall far from the electric upright and it was a pleasure to watch father and daughter get to improvise onstage together.

Later, Slightly Stoopid played to a good crowd by the pool and to a light drizzle pretty early in the afternoon. Then G Love hit the stage. There were free drinks and appetizers by the pool. It picked the night up even though the sun was still raging over head. I never caught his name, but the lead singer and sax player from Fishbone had also entered into the picture at some point in the weekend and had been sitting in all over. G Love’s set was no exception. It always added a little something extra to the show to have him, with his crazy maroon suits and stage antics, running around on stage.

After dinner, it was again time for Medeski in the Normandie Lounge and Al Howard and the K23 Orchestra up on the Lido Deck. Al later described their performance as their best to date, and it wasn’t hard to see why. There was something about the boat, the collective movement of the water, stories below, for sure added its own ambiance, but there was an energy like you rarely see in music venues or at festivals. It was almost as if the boat was playing and each particular band was simply tapping in with their set to let the larger sound out. Both of these sets were no exception. K23 had a solid crowd upstairs relishing every last moment of the weekend. The five piece band played as one, as they always do and Al brought his dense and introspective look at the world over on top of it. And people got down.

The last band that I caught this night was the Everyone Orchestra. I was expecting a similar show to the previous one that I had seen that had been such a great start to the weekend. I thought that it would be a nice bookend to the whole thing, but it was nothing like the previous performance. Either these guys had made a lot of friends over the weekend, or they had simply held out for their second performance. All of a sudden Everyone Orchestra lived up to its name. The lights hit the stage in the Normandie Lounge, and there were no less than 25 people standing on stage making a barely audible drone. Drummers and upright bassists, electric guitarists and mandolins, fiddles and vocals, hammer dulcimers and keyboards, and they all seemed to be making one sound. There was absolutely no differentiation amongst musicians on stage. It was simply one sound. And the sound moved and we had a full wave led by Janover that involved the audience as much as it did the band. And the sound went unbroken. And the sound grew and it dimmed and it grew stronger. At one point everyone cut out and That 1 Guy showed a larger crowded just what he could do with those Magic Pipes. Then, as if they had been waiting all along to do so, they all picked up something handheld, be it a drum or a mandolin or a washboard, and they started to leave. But they didn’t leave, they entered. They joined us in the crowd and became the pied pipers, and they led us out into the main lobby. And the music broke into a full on party on all 5 or 6 decks that were visible from this particular lobby. And they left us there on high. Some seemed confused, some seemed gratified, but we all knew what to do. We headed to the dance party that had broken out sometime before in an adjacent lobby and partied until we felt we could no more and then we retired to our staterooms, many with ocean views, and wondered how we had found ourselves on this Fantasy Boat, and more importantly, how we could stay there forever, in a Peter Pan like dream that allows for time to stand still as long as good thoughts are thought and good acts are acted, and of course, good music is raged through the blood of everyone interested in being a part of something magical.

Of course it ended, but on some level, the Xingolati Groove Cruise will rage forever, not just on all of the participants in attendance, but on the ship itself, the Carnival Paradise, that got to finally wake up and live this weekend. At one point, I was watching some band or another upstairs and I walked by a crew member who was exclaiming “How come I have never heard music like this before???!!!” How come indeed?

The Paradise seemed built for just such an outing, waiting patiently, for who knows how many years, for the guys at Guy Grand productions to do something about it, to bring it to life. It, along with its crew of close to a thousand people from all over the world, were like a child born without its senses. They are happy enough in the world not knowing what they are missing. But how can they go back once they have tasted greatness, once they have seen what they are missing? How can any of us return to our old life after such an event? The answer is that we cannot, we must take what we saw and be constructive with it. We must seek out life, and as countless stickers read all throughout the crowd, we must be “Pushin’ the Good Vibe.” We must allow our growth to be a catalyst for change, and we must never let this maiden voyage of Xingolati end. We must keep it with us wherever we go and tell the world that there is more to life than what we know.

That is our responsibility for having tasted such sweet and forbidden fruit and I only hope that this challenge is one that we are all up to. The message of this weekend shined through the glitz and the glamour. It as a message of change and responsibility. It was a call to see through disguises, while possibly wearing ones ourselves. It was a reminder that we are all both capable and responsible to be the change that we wish to see in the world. It showed us that any elevator can be a venue if you look at it right, any dinner-out can be an extension of our community, that every stranger is just someone waiting to meet you, and that all of us are in this together. It said to never stop seeing between the lines to imagine new possibilities, both great and small. It was an assurance that they are out there, and that there are those around us who will help along the way. All in all, I think that Derrick would have been pleased.

All photos by Josh Miller. You may email at: [email protected]

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