POP MUSIC REVIEW : Getting a Grip on Yomo Toro

Yomo Toro is a marketing nightmare. The Puerto Rican master of the cuatro --a 10-string adaptation of the acoustic guitar--has been compared to Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix, he’s linked to the salsa scene, and he’s the featured artist of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s “Music of the Americas” program. Naturally, his performance at the Wadsworth Theater on Sunday was presented as part of UCLA’s free “Jazz at the Wadsworth” series.

Actually, the music of Toro and his skilled but somewhat muted sextet was easy to get a grip on Sunday. Like Hendrix and bluesman Albert King, the left-handed Toro plays upside down, and he tore off some fast, precise runs that sometimes recalled flamenco, sometimes the acoustic John McLaughlin.

His jibaro style was a Puerto Rican-rooted, pan-Caribbean hybrid. There was an occasional dash of Colombian cumbia , and “El Sapo” split the difference between salsa and “La Bamba.” Toro and violinist Louis Kahn gave the ballads a melancholy tinge behind Dalia Silva’s slightly overwrought singing; when Kahn switched to trombone, the salsa underpinnings came to the fore.

Too bad the setting was so formal. It would be nice to hear Toro and company when they were just concerned with rockin’ the house. Certainly the flood of people who surrounded the band after Toro invited them onstage to dance to the final salsa piece would agree.