Ruben Blades’ Performance a Good Omen for Latin Jazz

In many ways, Sunday night’s Ruben Blades concert at the Ventura Theatre could be seen as a good omen for Latin jazz and salsa on the West Coast.

Blades isn’t new to this edge of the continent. His mission of broadening salsa’s boundaries by fusing it with new-jazz and world-beat inflections and a rich tradition of Latino narrative balladry has grown synergistically with his movie career.

Moreover, though the New York veterans who invented salsa more than two decades ago are faced with losing a new Latino generation as it forges a Latin hip-hop identity, they still tour here. Meanwhile, the handful of local bands, many with deep jazz roots, are surviving with modest success.

What Panama’s hybrid salsa-jazz-movie superstar brought to his wildly enthusiastic fans was the promise of more live performances at smaller clubs like the Ventura-- and the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano where Blades plays Wednesday night.

And, despite periodic sound problems which made it difficult to hear his voice, Blades managed to provide local salsa acts with a new standard.

His band, Son del Solar, has expanded to 11 members with the addition of trombonists “Papo” Vasquez and Reinaldo Jorge, who have had a humanizing effect on the band: They lend flashes of heat and color to the jazzier, cooler, overtly synthesized sound of such songs as “Nacer de Ti” (“Born From You”) and “Patria” (“Motherland”), Blades’ best love song to date, from his current “Antecedente” album.

Against the brutal accuracy of Robert Ameen’s drumming on traps, Blades returned to his extroverted storytelling style. His fans needn’t have badgered him with requests for songs from his early days (like 1978, when Blades changed salsa’s face by recording “Pedro Navaja,” the music’s best-selling single ever). He obliged willingly.

If there was an awkward moment during his performance, it was when Blades prefaced two of his songs from his English-language “Nothing but the Truth” album by taking a shot at critics who have stereotyped him as merely a salsero (Third World artist). In some ways Blades is right: His English-speaking voice is indeed remarkably flexible, especially in lower, slower jazz registers.

But his performance of “Hopes on Hold”--a rock-inflected collaboration with Lou Reed--underscored the album’s weaknesses in songwriting. Many of the songs from “Nothing but the Truth” simply sound stilted--like well-intentioned but awkward translations.

Ruben Blades plays Wednesday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $19.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.