Gilberto Gil, Royal Festival Hall, London

The title "daddy of Brazilian music" may at first conjure up in the mind's eye a gold-dusted, portly gent in a satin shirt and a thin moustache, but that could not be further from the true image of Gilberto Gil. He may have written songs that come to the lips of grandmothers hanging out the washing, but in the beginning he was a revolutionary both in mind and music.

Before him there were dreamy bossa-nova songs; after him, a musical genre sparked wide open by his infusion of rock, funk and electronic sounds in what is known as the Tropicalia movement of the late Sixties. He is beloved of the Brazilians - not just for his musical tradition, but because of his championing of the disenfranchised masses. For Gil, whose day job is as Brazil's Minister of Culture, using the rural rhythms of the country's working class is a political statement.

At the Royal Festival Hall, he was joined by Maria Bethania, another key figure of the more general Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) movement, which followed the radical Tropicalia. The pair looked almost culty in their matching loose white outfits. She, barefoot, with enormous uncoiffed hair, and he, spry and agile at 60, with baby dreads, as he played his electric, not acoustic, guitar. The band comprised, in order of importance, two percussionists with 30 instruments each, an acoustic guitarist, a second electric guitarist, a bassist, a flautist/brass-player, a drummer, two keyboard-players and an accordionist.

The set began with versions of samba infused with rock, then moved into a cover of Bob Marley's "Could You Be Loved", from Gil's latest album, Kaya N'Gan Daya, a tribute to the reggae legend. By then, Gil and his band had the crowd on their feet, despite the limitations of in-seat dancing. Bethania then took the stage alone. Her music and presence particularly delivered the almost cinematographic drama that is another ingredient of the MPB style. You found yourself being carried away on a voice deeper and more velvety than Karen Carpenter's. Even after the fact, I feel an intense desire to get my hands on everything Bethania has done, if only to hear that voice again. No small task, however - she has 37 albums to her name (Gil has even more).

Gil returned to the stage, and they duetted again, moving into softer bossa-nova styles at times, before lifting the dynamic back up with acrobatic switching of instruments by the percussionists. You couldn't help but feel warmth for Gil's heartfelt song-introductions. The feeling would have been enhanced had I spoken Portuguese, but, still, when it was important, he translated for the non-Brazilians among us: "This song is about religious intolerance." The show ended on an upbeat, and the double encore suggested that Brazilian music has pulled out of Cuba's slipstream and is set to be the new Latin music of the moment.