José Oyola, a.k.a JOATA, smiled from the stage of Space Ballroom in Hamden as he looked out over the crowd. “It’s been a long journey,” he said, though there was a sense of things coming full circle, a chapter closing. He revealed how the song he had just performed, he had played nine years ago in the building just across the parking lot of the industrial park, when the Cellar on Treadwell was The Space. He turned to the audience again. “You can come closer,” he said. “I know it’s weird times.”
The occasion was a show marking Oyola’s imminent move to the West Coast, and it was thoroughly in keeping with what the musician brought to the New Haven music scene since he appeared about a decade ago, writing, recording, and performing original songs while also putting together a series of eclectic DIY shows under the moniker Taco Hut. Five years ago, after forming José Oyola and the Astronauts (from which his current project name JOATA derives), he began organizing Astrophest, weekend-long music shows that combined New Haven and out-of-town acts. In 2015, to celebrate the release of his album Hologram, Oyola organized a blowout at the then-recently opened College Street Music Hall involving multiple acts and, as a finale, the entire Hillhouse High School marching band onstage, all for a rapturous hometown audience. A move to Brooklyn didn’t sever Oyola’s connection to the Elm City, as he returned repeatedly to play and organize shows. So a crowd of faithful showed up on Saturday night to bid farewell to Oyola as he headed out to Los Angeles — and simply to see what kind of bill Oyola had put together this time to send him on his way.
The New Haven-based Shame Penguin — Dustin Sclafani on vocals, Tristan Powell on guitar, Jon Ozaksut on bass, and Kenny Maraczi on drums — began the evening with a set of uptempo originals that showcased how the band could create an intricate sound that also kept up the energy, live as well as on their latest single, “Sam Jackson.”
As Powell, Ozaksut, and Maraczi drove the bus and bounced musical ideas off each other, Sclafani was a consummate frontman, emotive, theatrical, embodying each song. He came on stage wearing a jersey that made Shame Penguin look like a sports team (on the back, the jersey was emblazoned with the name “Fuxgivin” and the number 0) and as the set progressed, the jersey came off to reveal a tank top memorializing the New Haven Coliseum. Sclafani also threw out colorful plush penguins to the crowd, who caught them eagerly, and radiated absurdity and positivity throughout. The audience responded with big applause and equally absurd chant of “more cowbell!” at the end of the set. Shame Penguin set the bar high for the acts to follow.
Next up with Hartford’s Klokwize (a.k.a Patrick O’Sullivan), who came to the stage with a drummer, bass player, and a laptop to bounce through a set of stripped-down, high-energy hip hop. Klokwise had a percussive, dense flow that suited both his raspy voice and the perpetual smile on his face as he introduced guest singers and rappers and connected with the audience.
“Everyone in the arts is working hard,” he said, looking over the crowd. “A lot of you are probably in the arts, so give yourselves a hand.” He picked up the theme of positivity that Shame Penguin began. “It’s not silly to have hope,” he said in between songs. “They take a lot of things from us, but it’s not silly to have hope.” He mentioned that this was one of his first performances since the pandemic had started, and he was delighted to be back on stage. “It feels good, man,” he said. “Music is just where we left it.”
The next act, the New York-based Alea, showed that, if anything, music continues to move forward. Backed by Sinuhé Padilla-Isunza on strings and Franco Pinna on percussion, the Colombian-born Alea (a.k.a. Maria Alejandra Jimenez) rocked through a set of originals that drew from various Colombian musical traditions — cumbia and vallenato — and combined them with other musical forms to create a contagious sound that felt both deeply traditional and utterly fresh. She played several songs from her latest album, Alborotá, which she explained meant “riotous.” She wanted to write an album that was “about being fierce, about being your most self, about being positive, about being independent.”
As the crowd instantly began to move to her music, she also took the opportunity to teach — specifically a two-step that was part of the cumbia. The audience caught on quick, and with a smile, she pushed them forward. “Put some hip into it,” she said. Everyone did. She also talked about the debt she owed to the women in her family, and how that gave her a sense of mission. “The women in my life have gone through a lot,” she said, but “we can be healing. That’s what this generation is for.”
As her set drew to a close, she introduced one of the final songs. “This one is called ‘Nobody Can Shut Me Down.’ Can anyone shut you down? I hope not. Not even this pandemic.”
By the time Oyola took the stage, the crowd was thoroughly warmed up and ready to hear his music for what everyone knew would be the last time in a while. Among those who had come to hear him was Curt Corum, who remarked that he remembered Oyola, Elison Jackson frontman Sam Perduta, and his own son — Joshua Corum of Head With Wings — making music as teenagers. “We supported them wholeheartedly,” Corum said. “God bless him,” he said of Oyola. “He’s so dedicated. He’s so talented. Let’s toast José. Godspeed, good health, and may he pursue his dreams.”
What followed was a set that brimmed with heart and optimism, as Oyola moved from performing as a duo with drummer and vocalist Ani Cordero, to performing hip-hop style with a phone providing backup tracks, to going solo with just an electric guitar. The crowd was there to participate, to sing along, to respond to Oyola’s calls so fast that Oyola joked at one point that “y’all are just clapping for yourselves” after a particularly loud bout of applause.
But he was also touched. “Don’t make me cry,” he said, when he started to teach the words to a chorus and realized the crowd already knew them.
The set culminated in a full-crowd singalong to Oyola’s song “Struve (Born in the City),” which had put him in the public eye in the first place a decade ago. Oyola had said it was going to be his last song, but reconsidered. Instead, he grabbed an electric guitar, sat down on the stage, and invited people to gather around, onstage and off, to join him. It was a song about leaving, about going to the West Coast.
“I want to show you what I believe,” he sang. “I want to show you what lies beneath / I’ll listen to your eyes as you whisper through the tide / We have to wait.” It was filled with sweetness and yearning, and for the first time, the audience was completely quiet, as if everyone knew that was it.
