Baaba Maal

Baaba Maal was hoping to create an intimate, acoustic setting for his concert at UCLA's Royce Hall on Thursday. Touring in support of his latest album, "Missing You," which was recorded in outdoor settings in his native Senegal, he arrived with a small ensemble of guitars, percussion, hoddu (a small, four-stringed instrument), acoustic bass and guitar (courtesy of his longtime musical companion, Mansour Seck).

South African singer-songwriter Miriam Makeba will kick off the 2001-2002 World Stages series, co-sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the Irvine Barclay Theatre. The author, political activist and United Nations ambassador will open the four-concert series at 8 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Irvine theater, 4242 Campus Drive. Makeba was the first African recording artist to win a Grammy Award, in 1965, and, in 1967, the first to have a worldwide top-10 hit, "Pata Pata."

Baaba Maal recorded his newest album, "Missing You--Mi Yeewnii," outdoors at night in Toubab, a village in Senegal where Maal is a superstar. The setting allowed Maal to capture the sounds of acoustic Africa--crickets and the sounds of village nightlife--as a backdrop for his evocative traditional African music. It's music that should benefit from the moonlight setting of the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday. * Baaba Maal, Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood, 7:30 p.m. $1 to $90.

The notion that all African music sounds alike should be pretty well buried by now. Increased exposure has spotlighted both vast regional differences and the existence of more meditative, acoustic styles alongside percussion-dominated dance ensembles. The variety of African music, from Guinea to Ethiopia, is the focus of this edition of "On the Offbeat," a periodic review of roots, ethnic and non-mainstream pop music from around the world.

Anticipation was in the air on Sunday at the Watercourt at downtown's California Plaza. But it took a while for it to be rewarded. The Africa Fe^te concert promised to be one of the most impressive events in the summer-long Grand Performances series of free programs, and the opening performances by Zimbabwe's rich-voiced Oliver Mtukudzi and Kulanjan, a collaboration between blues artist Taj Mahal and Malian kora player Toumani Diabate and his ensemble delivered plenty of rhythmic voltage.

The reggae-African music connection works better in theory than practice--at least that's the impression left by the lukewarm response the African artists received on Saturday at the "Reggae Roadblock" concert. A crowd of 5,000 at the Cal State Dominguez Hills Olympic Velodrome was waiting for reggae stars Third World, Pato Banton and Culture, and merely tolerated the four French-language groups in the "African Fete" package tour that was part of the show.

The third annual Africa Fete tour, headlined by Senegal's Baaba Maal, couldn't have gotten off to a better start than it did at the California Plaza downtown on Wednesday. The weather was perfect, the sound was good for an outdoor concert and a large, multicultural crowd packed the area to view the free event.

The appeal of world music is often based on the sheer exoticism of different cultures, melodies derived from unfamiliar harmonic sources and dynamic rhythms. That's made it challenging for singer-songwriters to connect with audiences who don't speak their language.

"I want my MTV ... to stay as far away from Live Earth as possible." That was the prayer of many music fans when Al Gore unveiled plans in February for a global-warming awareness-raising concert event. They remembered how the cable channel fumbled its coverage of the last major charity gathering, 2005's Live 8, and they dreaded a rerun of special musical moments being interrupted by inane chatter and inappropriate commercials. Those prayers were answered.

SUMMER is pop's dizzy season, with major players staging extravaganzas and up-and-comers hitting the freeway in rented buses. This summer begins with a choice between icons on June 3: Madonna at Staples Center, or Ice Cube, hyping his first CD in six years, at L.A.'s House of Blues. After that it's a free-for-all.