Mambo King Cachao Lopez in Top Form

At 82, Israel “Cachao” Lopez has managed to keep his omnivorous musical personality intact. Standing confidently on the side of the stage, the man widely credited as the inventor of mambo is all joy as he plucks the strings of his upright bass. He smiles at the dexterous musicians in his 15-piece band. He smiles at the dance-friendly music itself.

Saturday at the House of Blues, Cachao and orchestra, including actor Andy Garcia, unveiled the tunes from last year’s “Cuba Linda” album, which is nominated for a Grammy in the traditional tropical category.

The collection is a solid and reassuringly traditional feast of mambos, rumbas, sones and descargas. The latter, fiery jam sessions that foment individual instrumental prowess and collective intuition, are Cachao’s forte.

Some of the band has been performing with Cachao since Garcia pulled him from obscurity in the mid-1990s and turned him into a household name in the tropical genre. Singer Lazaro Galarraga, flutist Danilo Lozano and Puerto Rican tresero Nelson Gonzalez projected the kind of cozy familiarity with one another that is the essence of a good descarga.

Garcia has has been criticized for reaching beyond his role as executive producer by becoming the band’s official bongosero. True, his playing probably will never reach the virtuosity of his fellow players (how could it?), but his humble attitude and dedication to the craft made him fit unobtrusively alongside conguero Luis Conte and timbalero Orestes Vilato.

Still, Cachao was the center of it all. At one point, he attacked the strings of his bass with the bow, creating a tribal rhythmic pattern of distorted, guttural sounds--an interesting contrast to the formal beauty of his compositions. The ever-youthful Cachao never ceases to surprise.