MUSIC REVIEW : Brazil on Bay Blowout Keeps Them Dancing : Music: Infectious beat of Rio Thing from Los Angeles and Escola de Samba Sol E Mar from San Diego made for a joyous evening.

“Let’s shake, shake, shake until we die!” singer Katia Moraes exhorted her rainbow coalition of an audience early Sunday night.

As it turned out, no one perished from dance-floor delirium at “Brazil on the Bay ‘91,” but a good number of the festival-goers samba’d, lambada’d and bossa’d to a Rio slice of heaven.

The second annual Labor Day Brazilian fete at the San Diego Princess Resort Hotel on Mission Bay was all the more enjoyable because it brought together a culturally diverse crowd of 450 united in music. People of all ages, shapes and colors, with fashion sensibilities ranging from traditional American to exotic Brazilian, mingled easily in the intoxicating atmosphere created by the irresistible music.

Though neither of the headliners--the Rio Thing from Los Angeles and Escola de Samba Sol E Mar from San Diego--has landed a recording contract or made a significant mark in the U.S. music industry, their performances cast a buoyant and celebratory spell.

Led by Moraes, a Brazilian ball of energy packaged in tight shorts, a tiny top and a straw hat with a long, silky veil that doubled as a seductive prop, the Rio Thing supplied three sets of relentless Brazilian pop-jazz by some of the country’s most famous composers: Joao Bosco, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Mario Costa, Jorge Ben. The band also tossed in made-over versions of American pop tunes such as Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” and Sting’s “Walking in Your Footsteps,” rebuilt atop the band’s dense, rhythmic foundation.

Moraes and arranger-keyboardist Mario Costa moved from Rio de Janeiro to Los Angeles and started the band 18 months ago. It has already coalesced into the tightest of units, capable of handing complex Brazilian rhythms with the utmost precision.

Some of Rio Thing’s songs head in a jazz direction via the keyboards, but percussion is the dominant force. Unlike a typical jazz band, where the rhythm section supports a front line of horns, keyboards or other melodic instruments, in the Rio Thing, percussion instruments lead the way. Keyboards sometimes even take on a percussive role, as when the musicians would pound out chords as if they were playing congas.

Between the Rio Thing’s sets, Sol E Mar filled the stage with more than a dozen percussionists. Following the lead of Gyan Ashwar, a master of the bass-drum sized sourdo, the group’s half-hour sets put the cavernous banquet hall to a hypnotizing, mesmerizing test of its earthquake safety.

Ashwar and band leader Mark Lansom, who plays a smaller drum called a repinique and directs changes in the rhythmic currents with a referee’s whistle, stood at the center of the ensemble. Surrounding them were other Brazilian instruments, including a tamborim, a small, hand-held drum; a pandeiro, the Brazilian equivalent of a tambourine, and a cuica, a cylindrical instrument that yields animalistic yelps.

Sol E Mar was also joined by a pair of special guests: San Francisco-based Brazilian singer Ivson, and, from Los Angeles, Brazilian percussionist Lula Almeida. Neither had played with the San Diego band before, but the musicians’ Brazilian roots brought them together to the pulse of a common rhythmic current.

The carefree, exuberant spirit of the music quickly spread through the audience. People hit the dance floor early in the evening, in various pairings and groupings, or sometimes alone. After that, the floor was seldom less than packed. At one point, a line dance snaked off the dance floor and wound its way through the banquet tables.

In a back corner throughout the evening, the members of a Brazilian dance troupe--who had given a demonstration during the afternoon--broke into moves that made Michael Jackson’s seem elemental.

For the evening’s finale, musicians from both bands packed the stage, while dancers flooded the floor.

The show’s producer, Steve Spencer, a member of Sol E Mar when he’s not organizing festivals, lured 670 fans to last year’s Labor Day fest. He attributed the larger turnout to 600 Brazilian sailors stationed in San Diego then, and who bought 200 tickets.

No venues in San Diego County regularly host events on the order of Spencer’s, but Sol E Mar has a standing engagement Sundays from 5-8 p.m. at El Gato Loco restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown (644 Fifth Ave.). Spencer’s next Brazilian blowout is scheduled in two or three months.