BWW Reviews: OKA Grooves at Fortune Sound Club

The symbol of the sun, a perfect yellow disc, shone brilliantly onstage, over red, for the spirit of the land, and black, for Aboriginal Peoples. Likely the only act at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival to vocally pay respects to the "traditional custodians of the land," OKA front man Stu Boga Fergie (aka DidgeriduStu) donned his Australian aboriginal flag t-shirt with proud solidarity on Coast Salish territory.

Together with drummer Julian Bel-Bachir, Fergie proved to a captive audience how the life of the heart is a beat, a thump: a groove. From toes to locks, the Fortune Sound Club moved entranced, as OKA dug in deep up from the subterranean bowels of one great big lavish thanks, in all profound sincerity to the pale blue Mother.

On the day of the show, OKA released their latest album, "The Grassy Knoll," meaning the secret place where the family gathers on the land. Fortune Sound Club adopted the "knoll" soul. From the hard-edged streets of Downtown East Side Vancouver's Chinatown, against the fly-swarming, bloodstained streets running amuck with the pangs of addiction and all forms of homeless suffering, the floorboards at Fortune Sound Club boomed with a healing force as OKA sounded off on love, friendship, land and family.

Listen to the Yidaki (more commonly known as the didgeridoo), says Stu, who breathes through his ancestral heritage among the Yolngu peoples of the Northern Territory. Mixed over a grandiose wall of electronica bass-led beats, his fiery hip-hop clutch on Yidaki is as hot as the midsummer sand of the Western Desert.

The Yidaki, he says, connects the listener to "country" by which he means, "the spirit of the land". In this way, he opened the sound to speak, in all humility, with respect to the First Nations people present. Many a song went out to them, and everyone cheered. Then the rumble quaked again, spilling over into the spirit like medicine through the blood-brain barrier.

He sang a lullaby for his daughter in his traditional language, and together with OKA blending the Reggae sounds and vibes of Coolum Beach, gathered in the most gravity-defying fun yet heard from the festival soundscape.

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