Rock from a revolutionary

Caetano Veloso performed at the Orpheum Theatre. ( Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe)

The gifted and eclectic Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso has traversed a world of sounds and styles over the course of 40 years. He helped pioneer Brazil's Tropicalismo movement, a revolutionary fusion of loud guitars, jazzy dissonance, and modern poetry, in the '60s, and ever since Veloso's adventurous spirit has led to artful investigations of Beatlesesque pop, American funk, reggae, electronica, folk, and other genres.

At the Orpheum Friday, Veloso tightened his focus in the service and sensibility of his most recent album, "cê." Backed by the same young rhythm section that played on the record, the 65-year-old musician performed a rock show.

A Caetano Veloso rock show is more about variations on a theme than a single-minded pursuit. The setting was stripped-down and austere by the artist's standards, but the ideas were not. Following a 45-minute delay because of electrical problems with a lighting board, Veloso and company played a two-hour set (for a full house whose exuberance bordered on rudeness) that included all but one track from "cê" and a handful of older songs rearranged to complement the current, harder-edged aesthetic. He did sit down with an acoustic guitar for one lush, hushed bossa nova, "Coração Vagabundo," but fans who expected a mini-set of lyrical old favorites, typically a centerpiece of Veloso's shows, were set straight by the death-knell drum beats of "Waly Salomão," an abstract incantation drenched in guitar noise that brought Sonic Youth to mind.

Art-punk was the show's main touchstone, and the spirits of a couple of rock's deepest, freest thinkers - David Byrne and Lou Reed - hovered throughout. "Musa Hibrida" took flight on the wings of Pedro Sá's spacey wah-wah guitar, which turned sweet for the modernist bossa nova "Um Sonho." While "Não Me Arrependo" and "Deusa Urbana" were built of bold melodies and galvanizing rhythms, "Outro" and "Odeio" traded in lighter, snappier textures, which grew ragged for "Rocks," whose roots can be traced to that proverbial bastion of youthful exuberance, the garage.

Gray-haired and bespectacled, Veloso shook his hands like tambourines and danced goofy jigs across the front of the stage. He pogo'd and shimmied, and he never seemed out of his element. Neither did the artist's older material, thanks in part to Jaques Morelenbaum, the man who Veloso said "freed me from the fear of music." Veloso dedicated "Um Tom" to Morelenbaum, who arranged the song for the 1998 album "Livro" with spare lines, plucked tones, and high-pitched percussion that evoke Far Eastern ritual music. The band did its best to re-create the magic on bass, drums, and guitar. Later Veloso treated the crowd to "London London," his classic 1971 folk-rocker written while in exile in England. "I cross the streets with no fear," he sang. He crisscrosses the musical map in much the same way - although this season's vantage is through a narrower lens.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.