If the current western obsession with Gypsy music is a wave, then 11-piece Romanian brass orchestra Fanfare Ciocarlia is riding the crest. Fresh from recording a version of Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild for the soundtrack of Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat last year, the band brought together some of the finest musicians of the Gypsy diaspora for their album, Queens and Kings.

This, Fanfare's sole UK performance of the album as part of the Barbican's 100 Year Journey festival of Gypsy music, had the feel of a sweaty, turbo-charged Eurovision Song Contest, as guest after guest joined the portly band members on stage. From Spanish-border France, rumba-gitana threesome Kaloomé added pacey strumming to Fanfare's energetic, oompah brass riffs. Hungarian singer Mitsou squeezed out an extraordinary, high-pitched vocal as the Romanian Florentina Sandu's voice shimmered and plunged. Bulgarian Gypsy rocker Jony Iliev, who is recovering from a car accident, limped out valiantly on crutches to prove his staggering vocal range with a breathy, aching lament, and several muscular, bouncing dance tunes.

The undisputed queen of the evening was 64-year-old Macedonian diva Esma Redzepova, whose full, ululating voice echoed from her chest with all the force - and more - of a Wagnerian soprano. When, during a glorious, uplifting rendition of the classic Gypsy song Ibrahim, she shouted the instruction "Everybody dancing!" there was no choice but to obey.

At the centre of it all was, of course, Fanfare; four tubas underpinning gravity-defying saxophone and trumpet dips and leaps; the drummer addressing the audience in enthusiastically incomprehensible Romanian; trumpet-players breaking into call-and-response; the saxophonist giving a woman dancing in the front row the thumbs-up like a lascivious uncle at a wedding.

In a two-hour set that could have gone on all night, Fanfare Ciocarlia turned the genteel, cavernous Barbican Hall into the best Gypsy party this side of the Danube.