POP MUSIC REVIEW : Byrne Heads in New Direction With Latin Beat

It didn’t take long for one Phi Beta Kappa to shout “Babalu!” on Wednesday at the Pantages Theatre, where the white-suited David Byrne was performing his latest music with a big Latin American band.

That’s probably an accurate reflection of the pop audience’s level of exposure to South American and Caribbean sounds, so once again Byrne gets credit for broadening his fans’ experience.

But on the surface there’s something a bit off-putting about the way this privileged American flits from one Third World outpost to another, seeking the primitive purity and pagan freedom--the soulfulness--his white heritage and art training have denied him. The underlying implication--that this rich, self-sufficient Latin music somehow needs a Western pop star’s validation--is patronizing at best.

But it was hard to make those charges stick when faced with Byrne’s generosity of spirit and eagerness to share his passion at the Pantages. “What can I say? I’m glad you like it,” he remarked late in the show, with the surprised pleasure of a kid whose experiment just won first prize at a science fair.

Byrne’s Latin exploration--foreshadowed earlier this year by a collection of Brazilian music that he compiled, and fulfilled in his current solo album “Rei Momo”--doesn’t yield the startling, revelatory synthesis of Talking Heads’ earlier plunges into funk and African music.

Byrne signaled as much by making this show (which continues at the Pantages through Sunday, then moves to San Diego’s Starlight Bowl on Tuesday and the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Wednesday) a lighter, less challenging affair than a Talking Heads event, as if it should be ranked on a different scale.

Byrne didn’t establish a persona, and in fact he stayed as much in the background as any lead singer and star of the show reasonably could. His most forceful moves came when he stepped out periodically to show off some enthusiastic dance steps, like a shy tourist suddenly intoxicated by the beat.

The show began with six drummers and percussionists interlocking their beats behind singer Margareth Menezes, and it was clear from the players’ concentration, and the way they swung a free arm or marched in place, that this would be an evening of serious rhythm.

On “Rei Momo,” the delicate surges and subtle dynamics work in service of the songs, which are mainly in the airy, amiable style of latter-day Talking Heads. (The only two Heads songs of the set were revised versions of “Mr. Jones” and “Papa Legba.”) The faintly disquieting tone of some of the lyrics meshes well with the Latin sound: Both cloak their melancholy with bright surfaces.

On stage, everything had a bolder attack and broader strokes, and the focus was on the band and the sound. With the musicians numbering 16 at full strength, that sound was often prodigious: Percussion blasted like buckshot into the billowing curtains of brass, and the whole finely-tuned machine lifted off on the wings of Byrne’s elongated melodies.

Unfortunately, the audience didn’t lift off, at least until well into the show. This kind of music should be played in a ballroom with a dance floor, not in a formal, classy theater. The atmosphere remained curiously flat until Byrne suggested that the audience dance, and then it got hectic when ushers suggested the dancers get out of the aisles.

Too bad. In the right setting, this show could be as hot as, well, one of Ricky Ricardo’s good nights at the Tropicana.