By Kevin L. Carter

Too black. Too strong.

Seventeen years ago, Public Enemy used the words to introduce "Bring the Noise," one of the group's best songs and most enduring statements.

On Tuesday night in a sweltering First Unitarian Church - an ambience that turned out to be perfect for a night of real samba - Brazilian singer-songwriter-actor Seu Jorge took the hip-hop catchphrase and applied it to his style and outlook.

Jorge, 35, is very much a contemporary incarnation of a folkloric Brazilian archetype: the malandro-sambista. It is this figure - in many ways a Latin cognate of the American "bad Negro" - that is both venerated and feared in Brazil and elsewhere, and it is this aspect of the Jorge persona that has captivated international music and film (City of God) audiences.

On two occasions during Tuesday's show, one featuring a Jorge solo and another his three multi-instrumentalists-percussionists, the blackness and strength of samba and the musicians themselves came together in an organic, cathartic experience.

His Portuguese-language version of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," which he introduced in the 2004 film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, showed his multifaceted personality the best. Alone with his guitar, Jorge strummed gorgeous tapestries, while his rough bass-baritone and somewhat imprecise pitch sense enhanced the song and showed him to be sweet, not scary.

Later, Jorge and his bassist left the stage to the three samba percussionists. Throughout the night, the three men had driven and held down Jorge's vocal work with soulful, earnest performances on traps, tambourine-like pandeiro and the portable, conga-like tantam. Playing together (and against each other) on pandeiro and then repinique, the three engaged themselves, and then the audience, in a long-form rhythmic exercise that was invigorating and exhausting.

The unplugged ethos ran through Jorge's performance. Playing older songs as well as tunes from his latest album, Cru (Wrasse), the quintet stripped samba down to its old-style, Afro-Brazilian core - with liberal doses of Bahian axé music, funk and hip-hop thrown in. With Jorge on guitar and cavaquinho and singing lyrics that ranged from love songs ("Tive Razão") to the socially conscious ("Eu Sou Favela"), the group romped through a percussive minefield where even the bass often served just as much as a surdo bass drum as rhythmic or harmonic foundation.