Rhythm takes control of the Bowl

The Hollywood Bowl became the city’s biggest dance club for a few hours on Sunday, when DJ Paul Oakenfold presided over the final half of a three-hour concert titled “World Beats,” perhaps the most genre-rattling entry yet in the amphitheater’s 5-year-old “World Festival” series.

That concept usually embraces internationally themed bills -- this summer’s programs include nights devoted to Brazilian, reggae, Latin and African music. Depending on your point of view, Sunday’s concert either stretched that concept to the breaking point or found a new way to juice up a format that tends to become predictable.

By using the idea of the beat as a through line, Sunday’s concert could range at will, roping in the Indian and Middle Eastern inflections of Karsh Kale and ancient Korean village drums in support of the electronic main event.

Arbitrary? Maybe. Rousing? No question.

In his headlining set, Oakenfold quickly showed why he’s a star of stars among the dance world’s DJs, setting in motion driving beats that kept escalating in intensity. The Englishman came off as one of the biggest fans of what he was hearing, sometimes clapping along during a tune, raising his arms in priest-like supplication during the linking interludes.

Since this wasn’t in fact a dance club, Oakenfold gave his set an ambitious concert flavor, incorporating a string quartet and bringing out singers to perform songs from his recent album “Bunkka,” including L.A.’s Grant-Lee Phillips as a Tim Buckley-like master of mood on the Radiohead-esque “Motion.”

The evening began more sedately, with DJ sets from the evening’s host, Jason Bentley, and later from Hernan Cattaneo washing over the Bowl’s sea of seated picnickers rather than motivating a crowd of dancers.

Kale and his group Realize then played the East-West fusion game with mixed results. An American of Indian heritage, Kale (pronounced kah-LAY) applies Indian and Middle Eastern melodies to an electronic-rock framework, and Sunday’s set mainly soared on the spiraling vocal lines of Falguni Shah and Vishal Vaid.

The beats? Pretty straightforward, with Kale running the show from a conventional drum kit. His tabla solo injected a note of the exotic, but as an arranger he has a fondness for ensemble blends that have a spark of jazz, along with a tendency toward New Age blandness.

Argentina’s Cattaneo then took to the decks, opening his DJ set with a driving sample of house music whose lyrics summarized the genre’s nature: “It’s a spiritual thing.... It’s a body thing.” It was also a brief thing for Cattaneo, who barely had time to break a sweat before he gave way to the Korean drummers who had gradually filled the stage -- and part of the box seat area -- while he was spinning.

The UCLA Samulnori Drummers are all beat, and a mighty one at that, playing a modernized variant on the ancient farmers’ band music called nongak. Ensemble members, about 100 strong and vividly clad in black tunics with red headbands and belts, pounded their martial rhythms in powerful unison. With their assortment of acoustic drums, they asserted the primal foundation of the beat.

Then Oakenfold plugged it in and sent it into space, culminating his set on a stage crowded with musicians (including his colleague Carmen Rizzo, Kale sitting in on tabla and, finally, the Korean ensemble). Oakenfold might be a master of the beat, but at the end, surrounded by these ancient drums, he was just another slave to the rhythm.