Baca: Earthy yet refined sounds of the people

IN the middle of singer Susana Baca’s sophisticated set of Afro-Peruvian music Tuesday at the Conga Room, a male fan gave a rowdy shout from the dance floor: “¡Que viva el Peru!”

His unruly tone burst through the well-behaved crowd as a reminder of the poor-man’s roots of this bluesy music, cultivated by the descendants of slaves in the black barrios of Lima, like the one where Baca was raised. The classy singer, a model of regal refinement and artistic composure, cooed a low-key response with a motherly smile: “Si, que viva” (Yes, may it live).

Her gentle comeback spoke volumes about her highly polished approach to the genre, a cousin of Afro-Cuban music with its own distinct rhythms and dances, such as the mid-tempo, plaintive lando. Baca wasn’t interested in hosting a street party with patriotism and pisco, the national drink. She was offering a serious concert to showcase world-class music.

Barefoot but donning a peach-colored gown of satin and chiffon, the sixtysomething singer stuck mostly to the silky songs from her latest studio album, “Travesias,” her first in four years. This is not easy-listening pop music. It is challenging stuff, as demanding of the listener as of the vocalist and her consummate quartet.

To appreciate Baca’s talents, you have to pay close attention, unlike the boorish bunch at the bar who chattered loudly over her delicate, breathy vocals. Baca doesn’t have the power and dazzle of, say, Cuba’s Celia Cruz. Instead, she conveys subtle emotions softly and with Old World grace.

Her dance steps are measured too. In this raunchy reggaeton era when women confuse dancing with simulated sex, Baca shows how much rhythm can be packed into a restrained shimmy of the shoulders or genteel sway of the hips.

Critics say Baca is too artsy for this earthy folk style, assuming cosmopolitan pretensions to please a world-music following fostered by her U.S. patron David Byrne. But detractors would surely have been silenced Tuesday by the force and jazz-level skill of her backup musicians, Hugo Bravo (percussion), David Pinto (bass), Juan Medrano (cajon) and Sergio Valdeos (guitar).

The band stirred up a rousing, rumbling rhythm for the festive close of Baca’s show. It even made you want to shout out, “¡Que viva el Peru!”