Though this concert marks the British debut of Simon Diaz, the 75-year-old Venezuelan singer-songwriter, it feels more like a homecoming. The Barbican is a temporary province of Venezuela, with flags and a crowd that laps up every note and Spanish word with unmitigated pleasure. The face and voice of Diaz (who, in the 1960s, fronted a children's TV show as Tio Simon, or Uncle Simon), seem to occupy a slot deep in the troubled nation's heart.
The music is superficially simple and sunny: gentle rhythms, such as the tonada and the merengue, over which he sings with a storyteller's unhurried delivery. For two numbers, including Tonada de Luna Llena, he accompanies himself solely on the four-string cuatro. But for most of the set he is accompanied by Gurrufio, augmented by Luis Alberto Fajardo on harp.
Gurrufio, fronted by flute player Luis Julio Toro, are a revelation, playing eight of their own numbers before Diaz and Fajardo join them. Each piece is classified by its dance type; their favourite is the joropo, which Toro calls "a most peculiar rhythm". "Folk-classical" doesn't quite do justice to the enormous energy that springs from the five-piece, with David Pena (bass), Jaime Martinez (oboe) Juan Ernesto Laya (maracas) and Jose "Cheo" Hurtado, an unstoppable ball of fire on the tiny cuatro. Laya is fabulous, driving the band with more intensity than half a dozen punk drummers.
In fact, it feels like Maracas Night at the Barbican, with Gustavo Ovalles, a similarly gifted percussionist, stunning the crowd in a duo with inventive Cuban pianist Omar Sosa. Their opening performance - hardly fair to call it a support act - would have merited a four-star review on its own, and the audience, largely there for Diaz, applauds generously.
Diaz can do no wrong, singing songs such as Luna de Margarita and Alcaravan, for which his compatriots anticipate every phrase. He frequently allows the audience to complete his verses, and on one occasion hands down the microphone so that a girl on the front row can sing a line. The melodic Mercedes features a funny walk and an extended anecdote; for El Becerrito he treats us to a surprisingly nimble little dance. And he closes, to everyone's delight, with his hit Caballo Viejo, the tale of a man who spurns the attentions of a younger woman - perhaps more poignant and funny now that his voice is genuinely that of an old gentleman.
