Great bands reach a stage where they become invincible, and Mestre Ambrosio (from Recife, north-eastern Brazil) must have reached it some time before their UK debut last Friday.
They create a musical universe dominated by multiple percussion and underpinned by Mazinho Lima's tirelessly inventive bass guitar. Hyperactive Helder Vasconcelos plays sanfona (a small eight-button accordion) and percussion, donning masks or costumes to dramatise the odd song (for one he races around the auditorium disguised as an old woman). The cooler Siba plays rabeca, a kind of rough violin. Dreadlocked "O" Rocha has a trap set and a double-headed drum from which he conjures a constant, effortless rhythmic racket while skipping around the stage. Percussionists Mauricio Alves and Sergio Cassiano complete the line-up.
All six musicians move in a wild choreography that merges with all the musical gestures necessary to play their magical, raucous songs. And these guys are loud, whatever the PA level, playing a thundering lattice of cross-rhythms and elliptical chants that is clearly difficult to contain on an album.
Bebel Gilberto had the opposite problem - that of recreating a superb studio album on stage. Gilberto's Tanto Tempo is easily in the same league of grown-up pop as Moby and Macy Gray, but her band, relying too much on multitrack-derived backing tapes for the subtle shadings of the album, would have sounded better in a small club. A bassist would have helped, too. Still, Gilberto has a fantastic repertoire, including So Nice, Samba e Amor, Mais Feliz, Bananeira and August Day Song. Despite her professed nerves, she performed with all the confidence of an artist on the brink of international stardom.
Mestre Ambrosio returned the following day to fill an early evening slot on the Barbican's FreeStage and the audience greedily lapped up every moment. In the last number the band headed into the dancing crowd, creating a swaying procession that halted near the mixing desk where, hushed and still playing, they sank to their haunches and bid the rest of us do the same before rising to stomp back on stage with a flamboyant crescendo. It was great theatre and terrific music.
There's nothing quite like seeing a band at the height of their powers, willing their audience to take their music into their hearts. Mestre Ambrosio's vitality comes from modernity and tradition, from skilful composition and improvisation, from anarchy and creative discipline, and they were genuinely unmissable.
