Brazilian funk, soulful R&B, jazz-hip-hop-bossa nova fusion -- an often exhilarating but odd mix of music was on tap for the JVC Jazz Festival at Bayfront Park Amphitheater on Saturday night.
The crowd was a vibrant but disparate group. Some were there for Anthony Hamilton, the smooth and powerful R&B star who rocked the house with old school showmanship.
More of them were Brazilian, there to see veteran Brazilian star Jorge Ben Jor, beloved author of anthems like Pais Tropical and Taj Mahal. Ben Jor also wrote Mas Que Nada, the song that the evening's other star, Sergio Mendes, made famous in 1966 with his soft jazz-pop-bossa nova fusion version.
That song, as produced by hip-hop star will.i.am, powered Mendes' 2004 comeback album, Timeless. And judging by the mostly young and exuberant crowd that danced across the front and down the aisles for Mendes' set, the 67-year old pianist and musician deserves the title. Some fans looked like they had been around for Mendes' first go-round, but they were definitely in the minority. Not many sixties stars can attract that many 20-something Brazilians, African-Americans, Cubans, Anglos and who knows what other ethnicities and get them hip-shaking and screaming.
Beaming from behind a keyboard where he pounded out jazz harmonies and bossa rhythms and presiding over a terrific and youthful seven piece band, plus three singers (including Mendes' wife Gracinha Leporace) and rapper H20, Mendes looked happily at home. The music that worked best was closest to his original fusion of pop, jazz and Brazilian -- a burbling, jazzy polyrhythmic jam, powered up Saturday by two terrific percussionists and muscular bass and guitar.
The one sour note was Never Gonna Let You Go, a cheesey power ballad that was a huge hit for Mendes in 1983 but was wince-inducingly out of place.
But he made up for it with Mas Que Nada, with Ben Jor stepping in to help out on what Mendes proclaimed ''the most important Brazilian song of all time.'' Under a nearly full Miami moon, that seemed plausible.
Ben Jor was in the unfortunate position of having had to go on around 6 p.m. under a still brutally hot sun. He blended American funk and Brazilian poly-rhythms into a pulsing, infectious, muscular sound, with a tight band delivering soulful saxophone and trumpet, taut funk basslines, and even some blues rock guitar from Ben Jor himself. Would have been nice to hear him stretch out more than his short set allowed.
Anthony Hamilton is a classic style R&B singer, with an enormous, rich, soaring voice, capable of going from a goosebump-inducing falsetto to a stomach-quivering chocolate low. He can build and build a song, using raise-the-roof gospel power and declamatory call and response like a practiced preacher.
He's an old school showman, too; for Sista Big Bones he strutted out into the audience, trailing photographers and hysterically happy women. Hamilton could have better material -- for all his vocal power, his songs didn't have much in the way of melody or lyrical originality.
The biggest surprise of the evening was his wife, Tarsha McMillian Hamilton, a tiny woman with an astonishing voice, a drop-your-jaw, spine-shivering soulful belter who made a huge impression with just two songs. Her rendition of Reaching Out, a blues rocker by her husband about abused children, was electrifying, and brought the audience to its feet.
