The Usher Hall became a small Catalonian enclave on Wednesday. With the seats removed, the stalls area was packed with bodies, some pogoing, some turning Edinburgh's grand dome into the local dancehall - and many of them Spanish, since Ojos de Brujo's announcements in their native language were as enthusiastically acknowledged as their occasional translations into English.
Ojos de Brujo's presentation is nothing if not a spectacle. There's the vivid son et lumiere effect of a percussion feature in which the three protagonists, two seated on wooden drum-boxes and one at a regular kit, battle it out with lightning precision under lightning flashes. There are demonstration dances, an opening dramatic flamenco and a stylish rumba, from a backing singer who moves with grace and expertise.
And there's the sheer, stage-covering energy of a lead singer for whom the term livewire might have been coined.
At the show's core are the songs - some celebrating the simple pleasures of everyday life, others dealing with more pressing concerns such as a call to end homelessness worldwide. Even the political messages, though, are couched in music with a dancing exuberance. The musicianship is superb, the whole mini-orchestra of acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, decks and percussion combining with the punctuating precision of one flamenco player. The bass guitar lines have the foundation-rocking power of a wrecking ball combined with an improbable, hyperactive nimbleness.
All of which drives the party atmosphere and, as the show ends with a vocal percussion duet that goes way beyond the tonguing and mouth-muscle capacities of mere mortals, few would begrudge the whole band the cooling cervezas that surely reward them backstage.
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