MUSIC REVIEW : Dancing Crowd Makes It Celebration Fit for Gipsy Kings

IRVINE â€”  It seemed that Gipsy Kings leader Nicolas Reyes got his wish at Irvine Meadows Sunday night. In a recent interview, the singer had talked about his hopes for the shows on the group’s current U.S. tour: “I want (each) concert to be a celebration, a real celebration like never before, as if we had known each other for a long time and it’s a real party.â€�

And that’s just what he got at Irvine Meadows, which has not exactly been a hotbed of passion for the group in the past. It wasn’t until halfway through the Kings’ concert there last year that people got the idea they were supposed to enjoy this stuff and perhaps even dance to it. But during the third song Sunday, the rousing “Djobi Djoba,� the amphitheater became a dance floor for the two-thirds capacity audience, and from that point on the crowd’s response remained comfortably between adoration and pandemonium.

Which is just where it should be. It has become popular in some circles to dump on the Gipsy Kings. Some people are irked that the band hasn’t progressed in its sound, as if it’s supposed to be incorporating gangsta rap into its flamenco-salsa hybrid. Others gripe that the Kings have lost their roots, subjecting their traditional acoustic sound to the drums and synthesizers that propelled their music to international hit status.

The root cause for the griping, I think, is that the music has become so ubiquitous that one scarcely can go into a dentist’s office, elevator, fern bar or semi-trendy cafe without hearing the Kings at low volume. For people who were fans from the get-go, it’s galling to think that yuppies now make love to these strains.

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But that’s scarcely the group’s fault, and the arguments against the Kings pale to inconsequence when compared to the passion, artistry and unique vision that the Kings’ music possesses. Before they became a sensation in 1987 with the international dance hit “Bamboleo,� nowhere in the wildest dreams of world music fans could it have been imagined that American audiences would go bonkers over Gypsy flamenco music, with its acoustic nylon-stringed guitars and Moorish-tinged vocal stylings, mixed with African and Latin rhythms and delivered in a Spanish dialect without even a word of condescension to the Anglo audience.

Yet, six years on, the group still is a sensation, and deservedly so. Sunday, there was nothing overtly different from the Kings’ earliest U.S. shows, and much of the repertoire is the same, but within that solid framework is more room for expression, emotion and innovation than most performers can find in a lifetime of style-hopping.

And the Kings’ musical territory isn’t exactly confining. Both vocally and instrumentally, there was plenty of improvisation, and subtle new rhythms were sent roiling through several numbers, including “Bamboleo.�

Reyes has a voice so full of life that it seems to spill over into the netherworld: as earthy and world-worn as his singing is, it also sounds haunted by ghostly remembrance and moon-distant yearning. From his celebratory shouts during the Kings’ kick-out-the-jams version of “Volare� to the aching sadness of his highly melismatic singing on the ballads “Trista Pena� and “Tu Quieres Volver,� his vocals didn’t need super-titles to get their import across.

He has a remarkable musical foil in his cousin Tonino Baliardo (all seven group members are related), whose guitar playing sparked every number with fiery, articulate solos and flailing chordal accents. The remaining brothers and cousins poured in with guitars, voices and hand-claps (Canut Reyes also took a pair of lead vocals), augmented by five backing musicians on bass, drums, percussion and synths.

At past shows, that backing hasn’t always been especially well-integrated with the front line’s acoustic efforts, either overwhelming them with volume or occasionally undermining them with musical cliches. During Sunday’s 20-song concert, though, the playing was well-balanced and sensitive throughout. In “Trista Pena,� Reyes’ sad vocal was echoed sympathetically by a synthesized fluegelhorn, and “Bem Bem Maria� became a veritable rhythm riot between the flashing guitars, hand claps and drums.

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The group nodded toward its acoustic roots, beginning its second set seated in a semicircle with just the guitars and voices. Only one song was done in this fashion, though, and it would take four or five such unplugged numbers to really set a mood. Perhaps even a small onstage campfire would help. It certainly would be better than the cheesy stage fog that clouded much of the show. The Kings’ music creates such an evocative atmosphere on its own that the fog seemed a hollow redundancy.

The program ended, as might be expected, with “Bamboleo.� What might not have been expected was the aggressive verve brought to the performance as the Kings roasted their old chestnut with wild Latin rhythms and exultant choruses.