Best Los Angeles-bred band since the Beach Boys

It was the sound of immigration, assimilation and ultimately of America, that filled Disney Hall Friday night.

The Los Lobos took the stage with three guitars and a bass and played the music of their fathers and grandfathers with a power and proficiency rarely seen.

This music of the border, of the campesinos and of East L.A., was catapulted into an art form in the immediately hallowed grounds of Disney Hall the same way Frida Kahlo raised Mexican folk art – with her collection of tin retablos and ex-votos paintings to the saints – into something more.

It wasn’t a typical show and it wasn’t a typical venue. But both were special.

Their first song in English was the bittersweet “age old song 'bout the home of the brave and this land here of the free,
One time one night in America.”

That’s where drummer Cougar Estrada came in as well.

He delighted as he played the congas with his left hand and with his right he used a stick to pound a large assortment of drums and cymbals. The ambidextrous display went on for nearly the whole show.

During one of the quick but frequent tuning sessions as the band members constantly changed one guitar for another, an audience paid heed to the obvious show of talent hidden by the drum set and yelled: “Who’s the drummer?”

Every one of the boys took a turn on vocals.

David Hidalgo’s voice never sounded better, fully capable of singing in a high cry or a low wail, while switching from guitar, to accrodian to drums.

Of course there was Steve Berlin on keys, Steve Berlin on soprano sax and Steve Berlin on baritone sax.

But they also brought in a harpist and a steel guitarist for a song or two.
Their ability to transform – no reclaim - hackneyed rhymes heard so often when you’ve had one too many margaritas back into testaments of a proud culture was brilliantly on display as they took a turn with “Guantanamera.”

They pulled off the improbable. It would be like returning “Good Vibrations” to the rock genius it deserves instead of the Sunkist commercialism it enjoys.

They had the tightness of a band that had played together for 30 years, but they lost none of the intensity, the same ways the great blues singers only improved with age.