The global pulse of Africa

What does “African music'' mean? Light-spirited guitar lines made danceable by polyrhythmic talking drums, big bands led by tall men in regal garb, dancing women in bright headdresses.

In the two decades since rock stars Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel enlivened their music with an African tinge, a stereotype has formed, created by crossover hits, charity concerts and The Lion King: an ethnographically rich pageant, politically relevant but separate from pop.

Now, as part of a movement towards a global music mariketplace, the cliché of African music is falling apart or, really, exploding.

A new wave of artistes and archival releases is now exposing the diversity of sound that has always been the African reality.

Recently, a group of African artistes went to America to promote new releases or to perform. In conversations through a translator, they discussed tradition and globalisation and their hopes for making music for a worldwide audience.

And they aren't all wearing those bright colours.

“For me that's not really how it is,'' said South African star Vusi Mahlasela, 44, who has released two albums of folk-pop.

Mahlasela's storytelling gifts and glistening tenor have gained him a cult audience around the world; he even performed at the world's most elite nerd-fest, the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, in 2003.

A new track

“I have been going on stage in T-shirts and jeans. I don't need to project that identity because my skin tells it all,'' he said.

Rokia Traore of Mali might agree. “I never have done traditional music because I can't,'' said the 35-year-old singer-songwriter about Tchamantche, her electric-guitar-focused second album released in February.

“I don't know how to think and how to compose in that language. There are some schools for that and I didn't have this chance to learn this music. My style is unusual and in Mali I have a special career,'' she said.

Traore grew up a diplomat's daughter. Fluent in French and Bambara, a language spoken in Mali, she sings one song in English on Tchamantche — a cover of George Gershwin's The Man I Love.

“I started listening to American traditional blues, jazz and R&B when I was 5,'' Traore said.

“I was listening to this the same time as I discovered African music. To say that the blues began in Africa, everybody knew about that.

"And African music comes back to American blues for people like me.''

Amadou & Mariam, a blind married couple from Mali whose career-changing 2005 album, Dimanche a Bamako (Sunday in Bamako), helped define the present African shift, have a similar relationship to their homeland and the world.

Their new album, Welcome to Mali, partly produced by British-pop elder Damon Albarn, takes their “Afro-blues'' sound into unexpected corners.

“The way we are doing this music is a positive side of globalisation,'' said Amadou Bagayoko from London.

“For us to be able to collaborate with people from different cultures is good. We're still doing our own music but we are open to others.''

For Somali-born hip hop artiste K'Naan, “African music'' can't be contained by any one definition — and not even by the boundaries of the continent itself.

Troubadour, his just-released second album, incorporates Ethiopian funk with reggae, rap and hard rock.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett solos on one cut. “In my music, I do address Africa in general,'' said K'Naan, 30.

“I address Somalia more specifically because I know it more intimately. I was made in that stream. I owe a debt and gratitude to that world.

"But I think there is no real start and stop between being African and being an immigrant. My spirit is obsessed with movement and the distance caused by it. So I never allow myself to feel at home anywhere.''

In America, the links among African music, jazz and the blues were forged through the slave trade.

Another parallel emerged during the 1960s, when South African exiles Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela represented the civil-rights struggle globally.

Contemporary American listeners' ideas about African music solidified in the 1980s.

Paul Simon's Graceland album introduced the sounds of the continent through the South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

At the same time, major tours by Nigerian bandleaders King Sunny Ade and Fela Kuti dazzled audiences with spectacular stage shows.

Loyal following

Embraced by pop stars, African music also served as the soundtrack to liberation movements, especially the South African struggle against apartheid.

“There's this old-school audience for African pop,'' said Banning Eyre, an American authority on African music and a senior editor at Afropop.org. “In general, you see the major African stars and you see the same old crowd.

But now, I've identified three or four fronts of new audiences for African music.''

Those new fans, Eyre said, often discover African music through American transliterators.

Dave Matthews, who was born in South Africa and the North Carolina band Toubab Krewe promote the music among jam rockers, who also have welcomed Mahlasela and K'Naan.

Afrobeat inheritors Antibalas and the Budos Band pay homage to Kuti on the New York club scene.

Vampire Weekend, an indie pop-rock band with Afro-pop influences, is leading indie rockers back to Congolese and Senegalese styles.

And in hip hop, Akon's success and M.I.A.'s hipster adventures have primed ears for K'Naan.

“I hear Akon and I'm, like, I love you,'' said K'Naan when asked about the Senegalese pop star.

“He's using all these melodies, all this tone of Senegal in pop music. I don't think he could have done it as a traditional African because Akon is very African-looking, very dark.

"So he did it with sound — with his nuance, with his melodies. And then he dressed up in a suit and told you about the club.''

K'Naan's style allows him to reach across musical genres. Some tracks on Troubadour reflect the influence of rappers Chubb Rock and Q-Tip.

Others highlight K'Naan's connection to reggae; he recorded the album at Bob Marley's Tuff Gong studio. The late Jamaican legend's sons, Damian and Stephen, are his good friends.

“In K'Naan, we saw a hybrid of musical styles,'' the chief executive and president of Octone Records, James Diener, said.

“There's an African hip hop component but what distinguished him were the elements of reggae and world music and, most interestingly, his sense of melody and his pop aesthetic. This album has incredible commercial appeal.''