Elario’s Rides Brazilian Wave of Popularity : Music: June festival will test the waters with three top jazz acts: singers Kenia and Astrud Gilberto, and instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal.

SAN DIEGO — Brazilian music has ridden waves of popularity in the United States, including the bossa nova invasion of the early 1960s. Now, with Paul Simon, David Byrne, Sting and other pop stars embracing Brazilian and other world musics, Brazilian music is enjoying its latest phase of heightened enthusiasm.

In San Diego, Elario’s has decided to test the level of interest for Brazilian music with a June Brazilian festival featuring appearances by three performers who represent a healthy cross section of Brazilian sounds.

Pop-jazz singer Kenia, who was born and raised in Rio but now lives in St. James, N.Y., opens the series tonight and Thursday with her five-piece band.

Kenia, 33, clearly owes some of her light, sensual vocal approach to fellow Brazilian Astrud Gilberto, 50, who plays Elario’s this Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights with her six-piece ensemble. Gilberto has been trying to escape the “Girl From Ipanema” tag since the song became a U.S. hit in 1964, at the height of the bossa nova craze.

The series concludes June 19 and 20 with percussion-flute-keyboard player Hermeto Pascoal and his six-piece group. Pascoal first became known to American audiences through his work with Chick Corea, Airto and Miles Davis during the 1970s.

Kenia has been described as a reluctant jazz singer--her music has the effervescent, buoyant qualities of Gilberto’s, and both women are most comfortable singing light romantic ballads, but Kenia adds jazzy twists. She has more range than Gilberto, and she is a skilled scat singer, which allows her to cross the line between safe, predictable pop and improvisational jazz.

She strikes this balance often on her new, fourth recording, “Love Lives On,” mixing a light, romantic Gilberto-like approach with some riskier vocal gymnastics.

For Gilberto, who has lived in New York since 1964, the latest surge in the popularity of Brazilian music hasn’t had a significant effect on her career. She doesn’t have a recording contract, and her last release was a 1987 album she made with the James Last Orchestra.

Still, Gilberto keeps busy writing and playing. The 1987 album, “Astrud Gilberto Plus James Last Orchestra,” included two of her original tunes, and she has written several numbers since.

“My songs are Brazilian-oriented, but I also like ballads,” said Gilberto, who sings about half of her material in English, half in Portuguese. “I don’t write songs with intentions of giving any important philosophical messages. I just write about love.

“My latest composition is, ‘Committed to Passion,’ and I finished another with my guitarist . . . called ‘What You’re Doing to Me.’ ”

Gilberto observed that the current mingling of musical styles around the world is blurring distinctions between musical forms.

“Music is something so difficult to put into words. Music in its pure form, if you take jazz, is seldom heard any more,” she said. “Music today is a combination of different things. Even Brazilians don’t know what Brazilian music is any more, it’s influenced by Brazilian pop and jazz, back and forth like Ping-Pong.

“I just got off the phone with another reporter, and he was disappointed, because he went to Brazil and he hardly heard any Brazilian music. When I visit there, I often hear American pop music. I hear more Brazilian music here (in the United States) these days.”

Some of the light, pleasant melodies Gilberto sings in a voice as soft and warm as a night in Rio ought to appeal to commercial pop jazz radio, where Brazilian-flavored music by artists such as Basia and Pat Metheny has gone over well. But Gilberto doesn’t think much about the airwaves.

“I seldom listen to radio,” she confessed. “I’m sure it’s important, I just don’t worry about it, I just do whatever I can, then see what they do with it.”

Like Gilberto, Pascoal, 54, has not adhered to a steady recording schedule. His last U.S. release was a 1989 re-release of his 1987 Brazilian album, “So Nao Toca Quem Nao Quer.” But Pascoal moves ahead with his writing and playing, regardless of what his recording career is doing.

According to Jovino Santos Neto, Pascoal’s interpreter, percussionist and keyboard player, Pascoal, who has released about 10 albums as a leader, hopes to move into a new phase of development with his next recording.

“We do have some invitations to record,” Santos said. “Hermeto is a great master in the studio, but we think playing live is one thing and making a record is another. We play things live that could never be on record. The idea would be to do a studio recording, possibly using a string section, because Hermeto, apart from all his talent as an instrumental player, wants to show his talent as a composer and arranger for bigger ensembles.”

Pascoal’s live shows have only one thing in common with each other: spontaneity. He chooses at will from a huge repertoire of songs, and he moves easily between percussion, keyboards, flute and such instruments as the berrante , a Brazilian wind instrument made from a cow horn. In fact, Pascoal has been known to use just about anything as an instrument--beer bottles, tea kettles, even hubcaps.

Speaking through Santos, Pascoal said his inspiration comes not from other music and musicians, but from nature.

“Since he was born, the music he likes to hear is the sound of the birds singing, the sounds of frogs in the ponds,” Santos said. “If there is sunshine, he likes to go out and hear the birds, if it’s raining, he likes to go out and hear the frogs.”

Pascoal believes that the use of Brazilian influences by American pop artists is a good thing, and he draws on many influences himself.

“The great pop stars took the commercial, better-known Brazilian music and made it popular,” he said. “If the public has a little patience, now come other kinds of music, different styles. Brazil is so huge, there are many different rhythms and styles of music. A lot of very high quality music does not make it out. If there’s a new opening created by some music, the other music can have a chance.

“I’m a Brazilian citizen, but I’m a universal musician,” added Pascoal, who lives near his six band mates in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. “In concert, there are Brazilian elements, because this is where we come from, we don’t run away from it, but we also assimilate and accept other kinds of music--Spanish, Gypsy, Oriental, there’s no prejudice.”

This week’s nightly shows featuring Kenia and Gilberto begin at 8:30 and 10:30.