Pop music review: Baaba Maal at the Hollywood Bowl

No continent has parented more musical children than Africa, and its progeny were out in force on Father’s Day at the Hollywood Bowl.

Never mind that many of these creative offspring — reggae, blues, gospel, beat-happy electronica — make their primary homes in distant parts of the planet. Sunday’s ebullient concert, headlined by the veteran Senegalese sonic nomad Baaba Maal, reminded us that in today’s digitalized global village of file-sharing and YouTube, African music lives everywhere.

Everywhere, at least, where rhythm rules.

For gotta-dance purists, there was the straightforward, gospel-infused reggae of Playing for Change, a fine collective of vocalists and musicians assembled by Grammy-winning producer Mark Johnson to promote musical connectedness and cross-cultural understanding.

Maal, resplendently attired in traditional West African garb, led his large, virtuosic band on a joyful romp through songs old (“Mbolo”) and new (“Television”), snaking his hips and switching idioms with ease. It was an Afro-pop master class by one of the genre’s undisputed stars.

Earlier, the Saharan “guitar-poets” Tinariwen held the stage with a captivating set built around simple, trance-inducing melodies and blissful harmonies. So euphoric are the band’s repetitive riffs that one woman in the audience danced on her crutches. “They made the lame walk!” my box-seat next-door neighbor observed.

But the night’s greatest forward momentum, in musical terms, was supplied by stateside indie progressives. Los Angeles band Fool’s Gold opened the show with a conga player and saxophone-flutist in its core seven-man lineup and a sound that owes as much to the keening vocals and jumpy guitars of the Smiths as it does to its irresistible Congolese-Ethiopian tempos.

Fool’s Gold’s penchant for elaborating melodies on electric guitar that might normally be heard on an eight-string Zairian lyre isn’t mere novelty for novelty’s sake. It’s symptomatic of a growing number of young bands whose members have descended from all over the world and can create polyglot fusions that sound fully organic rather than sampled or synthesized.

The same principle applies to Brooklyn band Yeasayer, whose sophomore release is fittingly titled “Odd Blood.” Decades ago, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell and a handful of other geniuses began putting Western and non-Western music under one microscope and fiddling with the cell structure. But for all their brilliance, they never genetically engineered a dance hook any catchier than Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp.”

Another song, “Tightrope,” opened with a cacophony of electronically generated Amazonian bird warbles and screeches, framing a simple pop ditty that climaxes in a plea to “give it, ge it, give it / Until you just can’t give no more.” Anand Wilder’s richly textured guitar work, Ira Wolf Tutoniv’s thoughtful basslines and spooky, echo-y percussion complete the band’s signature style.

This is a band that should be heard by anyone interested in how global pop’s resident aliens are re-mapping music as we know it.

reed.johnson@latimes.com