They’re like Sade -- only in French

When we last glimpsed the “Afropean” pop duo Les Nubians, the fetching Faussart sisters were in fast-forward motion -- the toast of at least three continents, testing out the 24-hour-party-people night life, slinking about in their neo-tribal face paint, sipping white Bordeaux.

Their 1998 debut album, “Princesses Nubiennes,” on OmTown/Higher Octave/Virgin, thrust Helene, 28, and Celia, 24, into the international spotlight. Selling more than 420,000 units (a rare feat for a French-language record on American shores), they had put the world on notice: Language was no barrier if seductive beats and hypnotic production could grab hold of not just listeners’ imagination, but their political consciousness as well.

“We’ve never been the types to sing about a Gucci skirt,” says Celia in a cell phone chat during a sound check in Philadelphia on a tour that includes a stop here at the El Rey Theatre on Tuesday. “For us, music is fed by life. And you don’t build an interesting life if you don’t have anything to talk about.”

Their hit “Makeda” -- which, sung in their twined, ultra-suede voices, examines the often misrepresented history and contribution of Africans -- sent the newly converted groping for analogies, such as “Sade -- if she spoke French.”

But the comparisons don’t do the duo justice -- curious girls who grew up in France and Chad on a healthy diet of American funk, French chanson, Miriam Makeba, opera and American jazz divas such as Ella Fitzgerald. The new album, “One Step Forward” (due March 25), is also after something a little bit more than background sonic drapery.

It’s a continuation of the journey, a title to be taken literally, Faussart explains. “We’ve moved forward between those years because we’ve grown up. We’ve traveled a lot. Experienced more. More life. More music.”

But they haven’t stepped out of their politics as one might a trendy pair of heels. That’s because the sisters, born in France to a French father and Cameroonian mother, have never seen message as fashion. Music has been a potent mouthpiece, one that can transcend age, leapfrog borders and seduce the un-seducible.

From the very beginning, Faussart says, “we started thinking, rappers are saying it their way, but we can transmit the same message in a softer way. But really, it’s not softer. It’s just different. You can listen to a sweet song hundreds and thousands of times, and one day you discover a different message. A different layer. Something new.”

Viola Galloway, world music buyer at Amoeba Music in Hollywood, noted early that listeners were not just ready but eager for the Nubians’ approach. There’d long been an assumption about who was listening to world music -- particularly a black American audience, she says. “But it isn’t marketed to the right people the right way. But when there are artists that have something to say, people hear it. And buy it.”

Even from their stripped-down a cappella ensemble beginnings as the Nubian Sisters, the idea was to do black music “from root of the tree to the leaves,” Celia Faussart says. That hasn’t changed. The long break between recordings had as much to do with life’s hard knocks as with struggling to rise to a new learning curve.

A burglary at their French studio in 2000 set them back tremendously. Seeds of songs, pages of lyrics, gone. “We had to go back [and] start again from the beginning,” Faussart says. It was a blessing and a curse. “We really did need to get back to real life. Get out of the show business life. We needed to go back and digest all the meanings.”

The new album reflects those wanderings. “The first album [made] a statement of who we are,” she says. “The second is how you deal daily with all the ideals you set forth.”

Some songs preach individual responsibility (“La Guerre”) or the importance of freeing up one’s emotional load (“One Step Forward”). Some tracks pulse with reggae or swaying hints of samba; others bristle with talking drums sunk snugly within ambient electronica: All of it is an aural scrapbook of their physical and emotional travels. Urban griots spin testimonies in their own patois on the new album -- from rapper Talib Kweli to African jazz star Manu Dibango.

Ultimately, the Faussarts hope, their efforts to build bridges across cultures and generations will help underscore that “we are all not so different. The context might have changed, but there is so much that is common to black people.”

And indeed, the Faussarts have put their theories into practice, including trading home bases -- France for Philadelphia -- and dipping their toes into the vibrant music scene there.

“We want to offer links,” says Faussart, to show that we are not as far away from one another as we think. “Nowadays, it’s not just about politics. The important battle is cultural. Politics are outside of you. Culture and spirituality is the interior.” It’s that place that music can touch -- and ultimately educate or alter perspective.

“We want to pull up the borders,” not just musically but also psychologically, she says. But you have to learn how to mix it just right, she says. “It’s too boring to be just educational. And it is too shallow to just be fun.”

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Les Nubians

Where: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: Tuesday, 8 p.m.

Price: $15

Contact: (323) 936-6400