Pan-African Sounds From Clegg, Ade

When South African musician Johnny Clegg decides to traverse memory lane, he doesn’t stroll--he takes leaping Zulu dance steps down every inch of the trail.

Clegg’s invigorating concert Wednesday at Universal Amphitheatre was part of his first U.S. tour in three years and largely surveyed his 25-year career. Yet it also brought him full circle via his reunion with singer-guitarist Sipho Mchunu, with whom he started South Africa’s first commercially successful interracial band, Juluka, two decades ago.

More than mere nostalgia, the songs spanning their recently renewed partnership--including one from a new Juluka album they’re working on--let the half-capacity crowd witness how Clegg’s music evolved from straightforward performances of Zulu folk music to what it is now, a stirring amalgam of Afro-pop, Celtic folk and Western rock that frequently addresses harsh political realities in his homeland and beyond.

For all its grippingly visceral Zulu lyrics and dashes of mbqanga rhythmic tradition, Clegg’s buoyant music still has a decidedly Western/Celtic foundation.

The opening set by King Sunny Ade and his 16-piece African Beats, on the other hand, was quintessentially African in character, but as amplified and transformed by the combination of electric and steel guitars and synthesizer with gourd shakers, congas and a pair of magnificently expressive Nigerian talking drums.

While most numbers were deliriously, incessantly upbeat rhythmic workouts, “Sijuade,” one of three new songs the regally outfitted Nigerian bandleader introduced, provided welcome contrast with a meditative call-and-response between Ade and four male backup singers that floated over a gently propulsive backbeat.

Playing complex meters with an almost supernatural cohesiveness, Ade’s group remains every bit as sharp and fresh now as when it emerged as the Afro-pop band of the early ‘80s.