The New World of ‘Americas’ : World beat: After 12 years together, guitarists Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah are enjoying the success of a second hit album and a niche for their music.

Guitarists Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah have been performing together for 12 years and have been leading a five-piece band for several years. But lately they’ve taken up residence near the summit of the world-beat market with their second hit album in a row.

“Americas,” an exotic, ear-pleasing collection released in May on Mesa Records, has been in the Top 5 of the Billboard magazine World Beat charts for 20 weeks and has a chance of eclipsing sales of the duo’s 1991 “Primal Magic” album.

“Primal Magic,” Strunz and Farah’s sixth album and their Mesa debut, has sold more than 150,000 copies, held the No. 1 position on the Billboard World Beat charts for 14 weeks and was selected as the magazine’s “World Music Album of the Year.”

Funny how things change. Just three years ago, the musicians were two up-and-coming acoustic guitarists who were technically facile with their nylon-stringed instruments and who delivered a very appealing array of Latin-based musical styles. The pair, who appear with their group Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and Saturday at the Wadsworth Theatre in Brentwood, usually performed in small jazz clubs and garnered only moderate album sales.

“We were playing a very free-form style, very personal and yet complex both compositionally and harmonically,” Strunz, 48, said in a phone interview from his home in Woodland Hills. “We’re proud of that music, but it was very difficult to make a living from it.”

Now the artists have a national following and play larger venues, from the 475-seat Coach House to the 1,600-seat Wadsworth. What brought about the change?

Strunz said the process began with a subtle but distinctive adjustment to their presentation that first surfaced on “Primal Magic.”

“We emphasized the rhythmic underpinning, employing the rumba, mambo and merengue, the Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean rhythms,” he said. “These are primal, eternal kinds of rhythms that we had been playing before” but not to the extent they are using them now. “This opened up a strong rhythmic groove.”

When the guitarists--whose solo styles are typified by long, swirling runs and shorter punchy ideas--and their band played a dance at the Flaming Colossus nightclub in Los Angeles a few years ago, they got a sneak preview of what would happen by fidgeting with their style.

“We had been playing to 30 or 40 people, and all of a sudden were playing for 300 or 400 people,” Farah, 38, said during the same conversation, on a conference call from his home in North Hollywood. “And these people really accepted us and were dancing to us, and at the same time gave a great response to the musicianship. That was very encouraging and helped us to think along the new way.”

The fine-tuning of their style coincided with the advent of the New Adult Contemporary and Wave radio formats, said Farah, a native of Iran who grew up in London before coming to Los Angeles to attend USC.

“Before NAC, (there was) no genre that fit us,” he said.

“We weren’t flamenco, we weren’t jazz, folk, Latin, Middle Eastern; we weren’t classical--so what were we? It was difficult to find industry support, and we fell through the cracks,” said Strunz, a son of a U.S. Consular Corps member. He was born in Costa Rica, raised in Canada and Spain, and in 1973 he became a founder of the influential Latin/fusion band Caldera.

Since the release of “Primal Magic,” Strunz and Farah have traveled across the United States and in 1991 appeared before 40,000 fans at a free concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

And although the musicians are appreciating their bit of fame and fortune, both said the music still comes first.

“It’s more about what you do with your time than what it brings,” Farah said. “A lot of people do things they hate, and they make money and they’re unhappy. If you do something you love and you make money, it’s all the better.”

* Strunz and Farah play Friday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $18.50. (714) 496-8930. Also Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Wadsworth Theater, Veteran Administration grounds, Brentwood. (310) 825-2101, 825-9621.