Pop Reviews : Luis Enrique Demonstrates His Musical Skills

The young Elvis Presley is a reasonable point of reference for Luis Enrique, the Nicaraguan salsa singer who, Saturday at the Greek Theatre, appeared dressed in Elvis-like white and elicited hysterics from his female audience with every tropical shake of his hip.

But in his two-hour performance, Enrique seemed intent on proving his skills as a musician rather than just as a sexy singer, and he fulfilled that initiative. Between his most popular salsas , such as “Lo Que Paso Entre Tu y Yo, Paso” (“Whatever Happened Between You And Me, It Happened”) and “Desesperado” (“Desperate”), Enrique played some instrumental tunes in which he performed impressive solos on acoustic guitar and then on congas and timbales.

Backed by an 11-member orchestra from Puerto Rico, and accompanied by five other vocalists, the Los Angeles-based singer demonstrated that salsa and tropical rhythms can also have a pop sensibility with such romantic songs as “El Amor Es Algo Mas” (“Love Is Something Else”) and “Lucia.”

One of the highlights was when Enrique took the guitar for an encore and start playing a folk version of his song “Date Un Chance” (“Give Yourself a Break”), a song that talks about drug dependency, as the members of the orchestra, one by one, joined the stage, taking the song back to salsa territory and transforming the Greek into a dance hall.