Afro Funké at Zanzibar in Santa Monica

An interesting Thursday story in the Styles section of a certain American newspaper (Hint: It’s located on 8th Avenue, near Times Square in New York) opined that Africa was going to be “The In Continent” of 2010. The paper went on to list various recent examples of this trend in design, fashion, music and cinema, from African-patterned haute couture to the hit Broadway musical “Fela!” and the blue-hued aliens in James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

That news may come as a surprise to the owners, patrons and sonic talents that assembled, sweatily and joyfully, on New Year’s Eve at Zanzibar, the Santa Monica club where Africa has been “in” since, oh, roughly some time around 2002.

As L.A.’s premier Afro-centric nightclub, Zanzibar has spent the better part of the last decade providing an intimate, occasionally unannounced setting for the likes of Zap Mama and Stevie Wonder to perform. But perhaps its more significant achievement has been to serve as a venue for some of the city’s most talented and adventurous DJs to conduct nightly audio-guided tours of the pan-African beat diaspora, allowing clubbers to gain subtle insights into the rhythms they’re absorbing through their ears, souls and peripatetic backsides.

This year, New Year’s Eve happened to fall on Thursday, the night of Zanzibar’s weekly resident Afro Funké program, and the timing was propitious in more ways than one. Although the evening’s overall emphasis was, naturally enough, on noisemakers, popping Champagne corks and adrenaline-fueled aspirations of peace, love and understanding for the decade ahead, the Afro Funké entertainment lineup also succeeded in bundling a few of 2009’s cultural milestones, including the debut of the aforementioned musical “Fela!” about the great Nigerian agitprop, Afro-pop pioneer Fela Kuti, and last summer’s passing of the U.S. King of Pop, Michael Jackson, into a shiny, pleasing holiday package.

Among the New Year’s Eve guests was one of Kuti’s former protégés, the Nigerian drummer Najite Agindotan. Joined on stage by two of his sons -- Efe and Metebrafor -- and a pair of female dancers, Agindotan (a longtime L.A. resident) gave a condensed but satisfying master class on Yoruban rhythmics (Yor-rhythmics?).

Watching Agindotan and a trio of drummers improvise around a beat, passing the cadences back and forth like a blazing fire-stick, or bringing the volume down to suggest the murmur of a babbling brook before exploding into white-water torrents of sound, is like watching an all-percussion version of Miles Davis and his bandmates in one of their transcendent moments of seemingly telepathic musical empathy.

Later, Agindotan brought on the young virtuoso and adopted Angeleno Kahlil Cummings, completing the virtuous circle of artistic mentorship that began with Kuti.

Afro Funké’s theme night then swept on to Brazil, with Salvador’s Capoiera Batuque drummers pounding out uproarious samba syncopations that had club patrons dancing across practically every inch of Zanzibar’s Tanzanian-chic interior.

Finally and fittingly, KCRW program host Garth Trinidad closed out the midnight-to-2 a.m. shift by laying down a masterful mix of old and new school grooves, including, inevitably, a Jackson toast with “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Trinidad, a regular presence at Zanzibar, curated last summer’s memorable Hollywood Bowl concert featuring New Jack/neo-Motown artist Saadiq; Santigold, whose influences encompass hip-hop, ska and electronica; and the Bowl concert’s capper, Kuti’s equally gifted son, Femi Kuti .

It’s this kind of respectful and knowledgeable cross-programming that turns disc jockeys from mere beat samplers into pleasure dispensers and, now and then, community cultural consciences. And it’s what keeps the rest of us from being not simply a pack of rhythmic tourists, scooping up “exotic” hooks and beats as if they were cheap bazaar trinkets but participants in a global dialogue that finds expression in the plain speech of primal rhythms.

New Year’s resolution to self: Spend more evenings this year at Zanzibar.

reed.johnson@latimes.com