Olmec: Reviews

Review of Olmec's "Ma Says" by Judy Wells

I knew Olmec (Mateo Sandyoung) in his Berkeley days when he hung out with poets. As a singer/songwriter, Mateo/Olmec knew who would appreciate his guitar and spiritual words. Here he comes again, with a full, rich sound on his outstanding new CD "Ma Says."

There's a stereotypical expectation that a Black musician has to do jazz or sing the blues. Not Olmec. He's created his own destiny as a spiritual folk singer. His "Fiddler Man" on his new CD is reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" but in contrast to Bob's raspy voice, Olmec's is mellow and rich, and his 12-string guitar work and backup instrumentation create a full, luxurious sound rather than Dylan's "jingle jangle."

Like Dylan, Olmec can be best characterized as a poet. He defines himself in his songs as a traveler, dreamer, seeker, and above all, as a "warrior for earth." I might characterize the spiritual quality of his songs as New Age, but if that label trivializes his uniqueness, hear his own words in his first song, "This Earth": "Bible, Koran, and the Medicine Man, they're cut from the same stone/One took the form of the Wailing Wall/One took the form of a meteorite/One took the form of the Sioux's peace pipe." The songwriter holds out for the unity of humankind--that "race and separation will be weeded from our eyes." And in "Wake with the Sun," Olmec sings of the unifying principles of nature for us all.

There's also something new in Olmec's work that I did not hear in his Berkeley days. In his beautiful song "Obeah," he asks his new traveler/seeker/spiritual companion, "Return me to my village now...Help me build African ways. We gotta recreate African ways." The songwriter takes a spiritual journey back to his roots where even the elephant and lion acknowledge African ways. I hear African-American dialect in this song, and I can hear it in "Wake with the Sun"--"Sun give light all over the world"--starting here in the "shimmering light on the Russian River" in California.

Though I've always known Mateo/Olmec in an urban context, his world is essentially one of a spiritual traveler and a nature lover: the little Fiddler Man "can entertain nature's throng." In our war-infected world, Olmec provides a positive alternative, creating beautiful songs which remind us that maybe we can relax, lie back in tall grass by a river, and say, a little like Walt Whitman, "my work is the sunlight" and emerge a "Warrior for Earth." As Olmec reminds us, in the wonderful encouraging title song on his CD, "Ma Says": "Don't let life get ya down." Instead Olmec's songs encourage us to keep on moving higher spiritually ("Fiddler Man"), bring darkness into sunlight ("Will Is the Tool") and shake "up the world to build our own" ("The Desert").