Even if I never make it to Rio de Janeiro, never get to dance in the Carnaval and feel the thunder drums beating through my heart, I will have seen Ozomatli in concert. And for now, that’s probably the next best thing. I doubt that I’ll see a more intense or energetic band in concert any time in the near future, although I hope W.I.L.D. (featuring Ozomatli collaborators Jurassic 5) proves me wrong.

When the 10-man band announced its presence from the back of Mississippi Nights with a volley of earth-shaking drums on Tuesday, the rag-tag crowd of college students and aging locals snapped to attention with a roar of applause. Ozomatli knows how to get a crowd ready to party. With each musician armed with a percussion instrument ranging in size from a cow bell to a giant bass drum, the band marched its way through the crowd banging and thumping everyone into wild excitement. By the time they made it to the stage, they could have played polka and we would have still cheered our lungs out.

The vibrant, intensely delivered 2-hour plus set that followed didn’t include polka, but it dipped through just about every other musical flavor. Jazz, rock, rap, Latin, klezmer, and party tunes were all thrown into the mix, and the buzzing, gyrating crowd loved it all. The band blazed through the best material of their two studio albums, 1998′s fantastic Ozomatli, and their recent Embrace the Chaos, never stopping for more than ten or fifteen seconds to give the crowd a chance to cool down.

They hit their high points on songs like “Guerillero,” where hard-hitting drums alternate with breezy cumbia and soaring vocals, and all of the many crowd-involving songs like “1234,” and “Lo Que Dice.” Throughout the concert, crowd-pleaser Chali 2Na (aka Charlie Tuna, also of Jurassic 5) got the audience jumping up and down, singing along, waving their hands, and even at one point doing the hanky panky (the dance, that is).

Ozomatli’s ability to shift styles so quickly is partly because their personnel is so diverse. Chali 2Na takes command of the rap-driven numbers, while guitarist and vocalist Raul Pacheco leads the band through the many fast-paced Afro-Latin songs. And their sheer numbers make Ozomatli’s stage presence simply awesome, without even speaking of the rich sound they get from such a dazzling collection of instrumentalists.

A horn section on the left end of the stage gives bright, brassy bursts to the music, while DJ Cut Chemist provides heavy back beats. A constantly rotating team works the drum kit, congas, and assorted percussion toys to keep the rhythmic fire going, while bass, every variation on the guitar (including a mariachi guitar, a ukelele, and a mini guitar), and multiple vocalists hold down the melodic end of each song.

It didn’t really matter what Ozomatli was playing, though. They packaged their occasionally repetitive songs in pure energy, never letting anything less than complete joy transmit from the stage to the audience. They closed their set with a drumming medley that few in the audience will soon forget.

They climbed down into the crowd and started playing just as they did at their entrance, with furious interlocking and syncopated rhythms, but gradually they started sliding into familiar themes, inviting crowd participation with tunes like the “Ole, ole, ole” of the World Cup of soccer theme, or the chant of “Oooo-zooo-maaat-liiii, ya se fue” (Ozomatli already left), at one point coaxing the entire crowd of a few hundred down into a low crouch before slowly easing them up with increasingly intense drumming. When they finally released the audience with their final beat, the crowd was exhausted, sweaty, and slightly dazed with joy.

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