A gumbo rich in rhythms and modern electronica

The title pretty much said it all in Saturday’s Grand Performances concert at California Plaza: World Music Electronica. The acts -- TransGlobal Underground, Issa Bagayogo and NIYAZ -- combined traditional world music with contemporary electronic elements. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

NIYAZ featured singer Azam Ali (from the group Vas) and multi-instrumentalist Loga Ramin Torkian (from Axiom of Choice). Interestingly, their music was most effective when the group’s third founding member, remixer Carmen Rizzo, was contributing a minimal amount of percussion samples and rhythm tracks.

And I couldn’t help but wonder why the gifted Ali and Torkian were willing to sublimate their understanding of Middle Eastern music and poetry to the simplicities of pop groove sounds.

Bagayogo, from music-rich Mali, was hampered by a somewhat different problem. Performing on the kamele n’goni, singing and dancing with dynamic intensity, his only accompaniment was one other musician and two female singer- dancers. The balance of his backing was provided by a prerecorded track -- not exactly an innovative use of electronics, and one that substantially diminished the trance-electronica elements associated with his music.

TransGlobal Underground -- a collective that has gone through various incarnations since it first came together in the early ‘90s (including a particularly fertile period in which Natacha Atlas was a highly visible participant) -- offered a rhythmic gumbo of colorful dance music.

More than any other group on the bill, TGU fulfilled the superficial promise of world electronica, but in the process losing the creatively succulent aspects of both world music and electronic manipulation.