BOBBY McFERRIN “Medicine Music” <i> EMI</i>

The long-awaited follow-up to the two million-selling “Simple Pleasures” is itself a pleasure. This 12-song assortment--written, arranged and produced by McFerrin--is a mixture of new and old modes and moods: He sings solo, overdubbing his voice; he appears with his Voicestra; and he includes percussion instruments in addition to giving his robust body thumps.

As always, McFerrin sings splendidly, his intonation never faltering as he goes from throbbing bass notes to a soaring, light falsetto--”Baby” is a good example of his range. The foot-tapping title track exhibits McFerrin’s talents for solo performance. At a medium slow clip, he takes a repetitive two-bar chant and alternately adds to it two or three counter melodies and rhythms, intertwining them deliciously, all accompanied by an undulating bass line he provides by singing and whacking his chest.

Unfortunately, only two tunes feature the remarkable Voicestra, McFerrin’s 11-member a cappella group. Happily, both the buoyant “Sweet in the Morning” and the gospelish “Discipline” (the latter featuring the leader’s father, barrel-bottom baritone Robert McFerrin, Sr.) are succulently rendered.