David Byrne Travels to a Worldbeat, and the Next Stop Is Starlight Bowl

David Byrne has done quite a bit of musical globe-trotting over the last decade.

It all started in 1980, when he cut an album of African-influenced music with the Talking Heads, the innovative New York band he founded five years earlier to ply the burgeoning new-wave scene revolving around CBGB’s nightclub.

Since then, Byrne has compiled two anthologies of classic Brazilian music (one of sambas and pagodes, the other of beleza), made a film exploring the Yoruban dance-music rituals of Afro-Brazilians whose ancestors had been brought to South America as slaves and also produced an album by ska band Fun Boy 3.

Most recently, he’s recorded a solo album, “Rei Momo,” of original songs that combine Afro-Brazilian, Latin and Western pop styles. If the album sounds like a musical melting pot, Byrne said, that’s because it is.

“It’s not really that different; the rhythms all have the same source,” said Byrne, who will perform Friday night at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park, accompanied by a 14-piece band of mostly Latino and Brazilian musicians.

“Afro-Cuban, and a lot of Latin, comes from the African influence in Cuba and Puerto Rico,” he said. “A lot of basic rock ‘n’ roll from New Orleans and Memphis was influenced by African rhythms as well.

“And now you have a lot of African guitar players, especially from Zaire, trying to imitate Latin players on their rhythms and lines, only on guitar instead of piano.

“It sounds completely different on guitar, but, note for note, it’s almost identical. So you see, the whole thing kind of keeps going around in circles.”

And Byrne, appropriately enough, is going around the globe on his current tour, which began last October in Japan and will end later this month in Los Angeles. He even spent a couple of months touring Latin America, where much of the music on his new album originated.

“At first, I was kind of fearful, but I thought it was the correct thing to do, to let them hear what I was doing with their music and take whatever heat there was to take,” Byrne recalled with a laugh.

“But as it turned out, everything went great--technically it was chaos, but the audience was really enthusiastic. And needless to say, I was greatly relieved.”

Byrne’s infatuation with worldbeat music dates back to the late 1970s, when he began buying African records--which were then just starting to become available in the United States, mostly as imports--and going to Latin dance clubs around New York.

“I started listening to this music and liking it,” Byrne recalled. “Here were people playing rock instruments, but in a completely different way, and I began thinking that if I had the right musicians, maybe I could mix it all together somewhat.”

At first, Byrne’s own explorations, with the Talking Heads, were limited to African music. It wasn’t until three years ago that he broadened out into Latin. At the request of movie director Jonathan Demme, Byrne wrote and performed a duet with Celia Cruz, known as the “queen of Latin music,” on the soundtrack album for the film “Something Wild.”

“It worked out well for both of us, and I was happy,” Byrne said. “It convinced me that I could write for those musicians and work with them, and that the process is not overly complicated, and that I had enough rudimentary knowledge of the music to work with musicians and not feel totally out of place.”

Three years and a handful of record, film, and production projects later, Byrne said, he has no intention of switching musical gears--although he frequently changes arrangements, and sometimes even entire songs, on the road.

“It’s just a lot of fun,” he said. “So yeah, I think I’m going to keep doing it. And part of the fun is experimenting. I try to keep myself excited, enthused, interested, and if that means changing things occasionally, then that’s what it takes.”

While he’s touring in support of his new album, Byrne said, his repertoire includes several old Talking Heads tunes--rearranged to reflect his new bent.

“We added brass to ‘Burning Down the House,’ and we’re doing ‘Psycho Killer’ with a Brazilian instrument called berimbau, kind of a musical bow,” Byrne said.

“I rarely go back and listen to our old albums, but that’s because you kind of get an earful when you’re doing them; you hear them thousands of times, so it’s not the first thing you want to put on the stereo when you get home.

“But I do still think the old songs are good songs, and they’re fun to do. Of course, the audience wants to hear them too, but if I hated them, I don’t think I’d do them.”