The Scents and Sounds of Africa : Pop music: Samba Ngo calls himself a child of the world, but his works are deeply rooted in his native Zaire. He plays tonight in San Juan Capistrano.

Take the anthropomorphism of Disney’s “The Lion King,” roll it all up into one man and stick a guitar in his hand, and you might just come up with Samba Ngo.

In a recent interview, the Zairian musician seemed to combine the enthusiasm of Simba, a laugh that’s as infectious, if not so skewed, as Ed’s, and the shamanism of Rafiki.

But where Disney often has been criticized for simplifying and sanitizing the cultures its movies portray, Ngo strives to infuse his music with the full richness of human experience, both personal and societal.

“In Africa we live in mysticism, we live in spirit,” said Ngo (pronounced in-GO), who performs two shows with his Ngomo Players tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library.

“My father was a medicine man,” or nganga, Ngo, 44, recalled. “When he cured people, he always used music. Always. I learned my father’s techniques, that everybody is music, and music is therapeutic. Everybody is sound, and sound can make these (therapeutic) effects on the body. But music is also universal--everybody can feel the rhythm, can be in the moment.”

Ngo, who also plays a free concert Sunday at California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, was reached by phone at “Congolese Camp,” an annual workshop in the mountains of Nevada focusing on the music, culture and history of the Congo, Zaire’s neighbor to the west. Held for the last 14 years, the workshop is led by a small group of Congolese musicians and artists living in the United States.

According to Ngo, 300 “diverse” people attended camp this year.

“Not only musicians, no. Normal people, doctors, we have everybody!” he said. “We want the world to know us better. If we were intellectuals, we would write. But we’re artists, so we do what we do.”

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What Ngo does is compose, sing and play guitar, drums and likembe , a Zairian thumb piano. Latin American music and Ray Charles were among his earliest influences, but today his music fuses soukous, jazz and funk styles into a danceable African pop. His concerts include Congolese dancing, extended instrumental improvisation and call-and-response vocals.

Ngo was born in Zaire (then the Belgian Congo), but moved to Brazzaville in Congo when his Congolese parents were expelled in 1964. He departed the Congo four years later and never looked back when the band he was in, Echo Noire, won a tour of France. The years he spent in Paris come through in his accent.

“Now I am (one of) the children of the world,” Ngo said. “I never go back (to Africa) to live, but only to visit my parents. And I go back for the smell, for the culture, to keep my roots very strong. I don’t want my learning to assimilate me. I want to assimilate it.”

Ngo was prone to speak in extended metaphors, and he explained in a roundabout way how people can be in the moment.

“The smell of Africa is the smell of the drum,” Ngo said. “When I say the smell of the drum, I mean the feeling, the spirit.

“The drum is a monotone,” he said. “The chief function of the mind is to think. If you ask the computer not to think, that is difficult. The monotone breaks the mind so the music can be. If the mind is still thinking, it is impossible for the music to be.

“When people come to listen to music, they are ready to hear. It is only for me to give the right sound, so the mind should not think any more, except musically.”

Ngo toured as a member of M’Bamina for 14 years, during which the group recorded nine albums. He now lives in Santa Cruz and performs with the Ngomo Players, a seven-piece band.

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The songs on his latest album, “Introspection,” have titles such as “Hope,” “Sickness,” “Respect” and “The Word,” and the joyousness with which they’re sung belie the often political lyrics.

“I am a political singer, and in the Congo (that was) a problem,” he said, then corrected himself. “It’s not that I am a political singer, (it’s that) I sing the things I see. With M’Bamina, I gave the government a hard time--the hospital has no medicine, but the people have Mercedes. And there’s no way to drive the Mercedes, because we have no freeway, no where to drive them.

“I sing the history of human beings,” he said. “How we forget how powerful we are, how we only see our own interests. Is the world blind or what? We don’t recognize things in terms of human understanding. Somebody has a problem because his color is different, or he is a Jew, or somebody has a problem because he’s asking to have a little more. . . . Baaah! “

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He took exception to a question about “current events” in Africa.

“The events in Africa are not new for me,” Ngo said. “It is the same. I was born in the era of colonization. Now I am 44, and Africa is more devastated than when I was young. Mobutu (Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko) was chief when I was young and he is still chief. But colonization was no better. When my father died, he still had the mark of beatings from the French and Belgians.

“I never believed that the atomic bomb is going to destroy the world,” he said. “Poverty is going to destroy the world. The problem is starvation--when you are hungry, that is the true bomb.”

* Samba Ngo & the Ngomo Players perform tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real. Lawn chairs permitted. 7 and 9 p.m. $3. (714) 493-1752. The group will also play a free concert Sunday at California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. 2 p.m. (213) 687-2159.