Gipsy Kings’ New Song a Crowd-Pleaser

The Gipsy Kings have ridden to more than 3 million U.S. album sales since “Bamboleo” erupted as their career-making hit in 1988. But momentum for this seven-man band of French Gypsy brothers and cousins has flagged a bit in the ‘90s. Last year’s release, “Tierra Gitana,” has sold a tad under 150,000 copies, according to SoundScan.

On Wednesday at the Pond of Anaheim, the Gipsy Kings pulled out another fun phrase to ponder: “Ami Wawa.” From the ecstatic response the less-than-half-capacity house accorded this unreleased song, “Ami Wawa” must mean something like, “Move over, Macarena, this is the stuff that’s gonna make the fools dance.”

No fools themselves, the Kings closed both halves of their nearly two-hour performance with “Ami Wawa.” With its tunefully insistent, endlessly repeated sing-along refrain of baby-talk (at least to English-attuned ears) and enough rhythmic buoyancy to float a navy, the song was, to put it mildly, an instant crowd-pleaser. The encore “Ami Wawa” even eclipsed rousing, set-closing versions of the two signature songs that preceded it, “Baila Me” and “Bamboleo.”

Not everything was so scintillating in a patchy performance that featured a good deal of unreleased material. For significant chunks of the show, the Gipsy Kings’ lineup of seven guitars out front, with a five-man backing ensemble of percussion, electric bass and synthesizer, sounded as if it needed more flavors.

But when the Kings combined their most irresistible rhythms with their most pop-appealing refrains, virtually everybody in the house turned their chair space into a dance floor--especially with “Ami Wawa,” which promises to bring many a strayed fan of “Bamboleo” back into the Gipsy Kings’ caravan.

* The Gipsy Kings appear tonight and Saturday at the Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont Ave. $23-$62. (213) 480-3232.