A Brazilian Santana Pulls Back From Excess

Pepeu Gomes didn’t live up to advance billing as the Jimi Hendrix of Brazil on Saturday--but if you substitute Carlos Santana for Hendrix you’d have it about right. In his local debut before a capacity audience at the Cover Girl in Culver City, the guitarist echoed some of Santana the man’s bittersweet instrumental cry, and his quintet’s amalgam of samba, rock, salsa, pop and jazz was what Santana the band might have sounded like had it formed in Brazil.

An engaging, animated performer, Gomes brought extra jolts of electricity and energy to arrangements that still retained most of the melodic and rhythmic subtleties usually found in Brazilian music. Moving from amplified acoustic guitar to an electric model of the cavaquinho (a four-stringed Brazilian instrument) and then to regular electric guitar, Gomes often unleashed the kind of speedy solos fusion jazz fans dote on. But he tempered those high-velocity bursts with a sense of when to pull back from the brink of excess. And the dynamics displayed by Gomes and his spirited, savvy Brazilian band were exemplary, particularly their penchant for sudden tempo shifts into double-time carnival rhythms that kept the jammed dance floor in constant motion.