At Last, the Congo’s Bateke Gets to Blow His Own Horn : Music: The African musician’s five-man band brings to San Juan Capistrano a world beat with Latin and jazz flavors.

Bateke, a saxophonist from the Congo who will perform tonight in San Juan Capistrano, began absorbing the sounds of his native land long before he ever picked up his first musical instrument.

His earliest childhood memories are of lying awake in the hot, dark equatorial night, listening to music spilling out from open-air bars in the village. His musical subconscious also resonates with the sounds of Salvation Army bands that came on missionary efforts to the Congo and as well as the drumming of Pygmy tribes in the nearby Ituri forest.

“My first instrument was a drum made of animal skin and wood. My father gave it to me when I was about 2 years old. But about that time he took me to hear an African-American jazz band performing in Kinshasa (in neighboring Zaire). I saw my first saxophone and have been enthralled ever since,” said Bateke, who performed for three years with Nigerian bandleader Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

In spite of his early fascination with the saxophone, it was the clarinet that provided Bateke with the means to support himself at age 12 when his father died suddenly. He was forced to leave school to earn a living playing music.

“A musician from the Caribbean had made the clarinet very popular in the Congo, and people always turned out to hear bands with a clarinetist. A bandleader forced the clarinet on me even though I only knew how to play flute,” he said.

Bateke was given one night to figure out the instrument. By morning he had mastered three low notes and composed a part that would fit into the group’s performance that night. After many years of composing and performing, he still remembers the tune.

Shortly afterward, a bandleader persuaded him to leave the Congo capital of Brazzaville to join his band across the Congo River in Kinshasa. “Almost as soon as I got there, they kicked me out because I wasn’t good enough,” said Bateke, who speaks with a melodious Central African accent.

“I had no money and no clarinet. The one I played back home belonged to the bandleader, and I had to give it back.” Eventually, he went to live with a guitarist who had also been turned away by the band. The two formed a jazz group after a sympathetic bar owner obtained a clarinet for Bateke.

In time, he learned saxophone and by 1965, Bateke, who estimates that he is somewhere between 48 and 52 years old, had played in several bands and toured the Central African Republic.

“A group I was in decided to move to France, where Congo music was becoming popular. I thank God to this day that I stayed behind,” he said. “If I had gone, I would have become completely Europeanized and know nothing of African culture.”

Subsequent musical forays took him to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea for extended periods. In 1973, he moved to Nigeria and, after a brief stint in the army, became Fela’s lead saxophonist for three years.

In 1985, he toured the United States with another Nigerian jazz group and got stranded in Oakland with little money and no bookings on the horizon. A performance at the Music Machine in Santa Monica was arranged, but the group split up shortly after that show. Bateke stayed in the United States and married Wendy Farnsworth, whom he met while he was drumming for an African dance class in which she was a student.

In 1986, the two moved to Los Angeles, where he formed Bateke Beat, a five-member band that performs his original compositions. The sound is often compared to Latin jazz, in part because the African sound traveled up into South America to form the basis of rumba, samba and merengue.

“African music also contains the roots of American jazz, so we attract jazz lovers too,” Bateke said. “I try to include some things they may have never heard before. Like the way the Pygmies taught me to play finger piano (kalimba). They were our neighbors in the Congo, and that’s where my parents took me for healing when I was sick. They are very sheltered in the forest and have remained free of European influences,” he said.

Bateke Beat--which consists of Bateke on saxophone, kalimba, bass and vocals, Ilo Ngoma on keyboards, Homero Chavez on drums, Andy Abad on guitar and Aaron Gross on percussion--is popular on the world-beat festival circuit and performs regularly in clubs around Los Angeles. After their performance in San Juan Capistrano, the band will go to Colorado to play at the World Festival in Telluride.

Bateke Beat will perform at 7 and 9 p.m. at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library courtyard, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. $2. (714) 493-1752.