Last Friday, local Brazilian beverage outfit Rio Mate, in conjunction with burgeoning monthly Uma Nota and Dos Mundos Radio, put together a special showcase at the El Mocombo with São Paulo based pop funk outfit Curumin, who slid down to Toronto for a gracious late addition to their current North American tour.

In front of a fair-sized, ever-supportive  crowd onhand ready to get their collective swerve on, opening acts Repercussions did right by themselves for group with only a handful of live shows under its belt as a unit, uniting 10 members on El Mo’s main floor stage for a mix of percussion, bass, guitar, and three-piece vocal.  With a sound rooted in pronounced, heavy dub grooves, the rambunctious crew delivered a stylized blend of classic reggae riddims mixed with elements of maracatu and other northeastern Brazilian beats, African MCing, and a mock sentencing in the spirit of Prince Buster’s classic “Judge Dread”. As the room reached sufficient hotted up, status, the animated rhythmists — loaded with integrants of Toronto’s Maracatu Nunca Antes — ran things down with a traditional baque display before handing things over to Uma Nota DJ General Eclectic as the night’s main players got their gadgets in order.

After a quick exodus  to the street to escape the heat of the cavernous venue (an unfortunately stalwart example of a city completely lacking in acceptable smaller live music spots, it must be said) the audience returned to the opening pangs of Curumin’s samba-affected funk groove. Though only three-men deep, the crafty trio managed a surprisingly rich full-band sound out of a set of well-applied MPCs, a bass guitar, and a drum kit manned by the threesome’s lead vocalist and frontman. The largely laid back, slow burning vibes played particularly well given the atmosphere, though that certainly wasn’t the only playing card in the trio’s bag of musical tricks, as the group bounced around from the timely baile funk bombast of “Caixa Preta”, covers of fellow Brazilian songstress Ceu’s “Cangote” and classic Roy Ayers tune “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”, and even an obligatory MJ tribute in “Beat It”. This was topped only by a high-point hip hop-leaning expo in which the group’s bass player traded in the natural sounds of his main instrument for the bone shimmering electronic bass tones of his sampler, to incredibly positive and necessary effect.

With the raw and successful encore worthy set in the bag, Curumin returned to the stage with yet another surprise in their completely unforeseeable rendition of Run-DMC’s timeless “Peter Piper” that had my shell-toes rockin’. All in all, in was a great night, and a pretty impressive off-schedule showing by the parties promoters. With at least a couple more months ahead of us, here’s hoping they can pull another one of these off before cold Canada makes a comeback!