‘Latin Roots’ grown deep

In the $20 seats halfway to the nosebleed section at the Hollywood Bowl, a trio of excited young Latinas stayed standing during Sunday’s exuberant set by Mexico’s Cafe Tacuba, shouting out every lyric to every song in Spanish for almost an hour. From this distance, where the band appears tiny and fan participation is amplified, those nearby could only hope the women were too young to know all the lyrics to the following act, Los Lobos, the deans of Latin rock from East L.A.

“Who’s Los Lobos?” one of the women was overheard to say, to the amusement of slightly more seasoned fans nearby.

Before the headliners took the stage at the “Latin Roots and Rock” show, the women left their seats and never returned. Too bad, because Los Lobos proceeded to prove they are still the best Chicano rock band L.A. has ever produced.

This show, sponsored by radio station KCRW-FM (89.9), could have been called “Mexican Roots and Rock.” The wisely chosen lineup represented three decades of rock-based fusions created in three vastly different styles by bands on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

From the ‘80s, the pioneering Lobos showcased its brilliant, bilingual blend of blues, norteno and cumbia. From the ‘90s, Cafe Tacuba blasted its frenetic, Mexico City concoction of experimental rock with folkloric touches. And from rock en espanol’s postmodern era, Kinky, the upstarts from Monterrey, offered a taste of their hypnotic brew of powerful tropical beats with loopy, atmospheric electronica.

There were no big surprises during the well-attended, three-hour-plus concert. Each band included numbers from its latest album, interspersed with hits.

A perfectly pleasant formula for an ideal night at the Bowl, balmy and moonlit.

Kinky previewed tracks from its soon-to-be-released sophomore recording, promising to be a powerful follow-up to its intriguing but uneven 2002 debut. This quirky quintet is best seen live, but it needs more than 45 minutes to spin that entrancing, pulsating groove it gets in longer club shows. On Sunday, the band captured a little of that magic with a closing, climactic jam segment.

Cafe Tacuba is a band burdened by its hype as some sort of sun gods of Mexican rock. But the mind-blowing albums that earned them that reputation now belong to another millennium, and recent releases have been a letdown. So it sounded self-aggrandizing for band members to lament in recent interviews that they no longer had any worthy competition in rock en espanol after the breakup of the Chilean trio Los Tres, to which they dedicated a four-track, tribute CD last year.

Sandwiched between new and old on Sunday, Cafe Tacuba fit comfortably on the genre’s continuum without overshadowing bands in either direction. The group’s dynamic set featured the spirited, folksy violin of regular contributor Alejandro Flores, introduced by lead singer Ruben Albarran as “150 kilos of self-destruction.”

Albarran, the sparkplug of Los Cafetas, as Tacuba is nicknamed, was firing particularly fast Sunday, skipping and twirling like a bushy-haired dervish across the stage, dressed in a powder-blue suit and white tie, but no rooster disguise as in previous appearances.

At one point, the small, charismatic singer sparked a frenzy when he hopped up the aisles followed by a spotlight. He was soon mobbed by admirers and the spotlight was killed before the masses could rush down from above. For a suspenseful moment, the singer’s voice was briefly silenced in the dark, until he found his way back on stage.

But what’s a rock concert without a little unpredictability? Even when all band members were invited back on stage by Los Lobos for a cumbia finale, the unified effort started awkwardly, lacked chemistry and never quite took off.

The only real surprise was how powerful and self-assured Los Lobos sounded against their younger competition.

They opened with the title cut from their terrific new album, “Good Morning Aztlan.” Co-written by singer-guitarist David Hidalgo and guitarist Louie Perez, it’s an ode to home and neighborhood created through deft sketches of barrio scenes.

The band took time to expand their songs with tasty, exciting solos by Hidalgo on electric guitar and Steve Berlin on sax, flute and keyboards. They also seemed to get an extra boost Sunday from two powerful drummers, including one on Latin percussion that had fans dancing in the aisles.

These guys don’t do antics. They just play and sing with the heart and soul and musicianship they’re famous for, having a blast from the blues to “La Bamba” and telling barrio stories along the way.

In any language, that never goes out of style.