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Translating as ‘eyes of a wizard,’ Ojos de Brujo conjured an alchemy of new and traditional Spanish sounds – and remarkably produced music gold.

Techari by Ojos de Brujo

This was everything that the Manchester International Festival stood for: new, innovative, exotic, passionate, unpredictable and above all, fun!

It was also excellent value for money. With the best seats in the house costing £22, you could have got you and and 24 mates into one of the best gigs in Manchester this year for the price of one bloated Barbra Streisand ticket.

Spellbound

If Rochdale’s Andy Kershaw wasn’t at this hometown gig instead of hanging around some Bedouin tent in Chad, he really should have been. This was world music at its finest.

Playing material from their 2006 album Techari, the nine musicians who are Ojos de Brujo cast a spell over our hands and feet. And it’s not often the entire Bridgewater Hall rises as one to clap and dance.

There were many great moments. A ‘duelling banjos’ face-off between rapper and dancer stood out, as did a sublime Spanish-bhangra fusion, inspired by their work with Nitin Sawnhey.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. But I was genuinely blown away by the vitality of this Barca band and their Latino-hip hop fusions.

Fusions

That said, not all of it worked. The band’s hip hop frontman needs to realise that rapping at impossible speeds made him sound like a cattle auctioneer.Ìý

Main vocalist Marina, however, was something else. In her flamenco dress and dredlocks, she seems to embody some of the fusions that have grown out of the ethnic neighbourhoods of Barcelona, creating Ojos’ unique sound.

Her final impassioned encore, sung unaccompanied in the spotlight, provided a haunting conclusion. Like Basil Fawlty, I couldn’t understand a Catalan word. But it didn’t matter.

The gig was sublime. Me gusto mucho.