Steve Hochman on July 18th, 2016

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Brazilian Girls singer Sabina Sciubba (born in Rome, raised in Germany, now lives in France) joined headliner Baaba Maal (from Senegal, educated in Paris) for the encore of their evening at KCRW’s Sound in Focus series at the Annenberg Space for Photography’s outdoor stage, and the two (mostly Sciubba) started reciting names of cities around the globe — “London … Berlin … Johannesburg …,” all the more poetic for her pan-Euro intonations. She even took some suggestions from the audience, one wag offering “Downtown,” and reprised the recitation a few times in the song they did together, Brazilian Girls’ “International.”

Well, all that may have struck as superfluous given the ad hoc U.N. on stage — Maal’s band members hail from London, Cuba, Armenia, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as well as his West African home country. And Brazilian Girls keyboardist Didi Gutman, who also came on for the encore, is from Buenos Aires.

||| Photos by Jazz Shademan

But it proved a perfect capper for Maal’s bracing set. Following the opening invocational chant “Yela,” in his native Fulani language and then spoke in English lamenting that where international travel was once a thing of joy and discovery, for too many now it is forced by conflict and war. That has been inherent in his music, stretching back to the early days of a three-decade career in which he’s been one of the leading figures of modern West African music, and it is the explicit theme of his recent album, “The Traveller.” It was a powerful message about the refugee crisis that would be matched by the show’s moving music.

Maal’s music throughout his career has masterfully been rooted in the traditional sounds stretching back to his family’s ancestral fishing village home, while reaching to the oft-related styles of modern life, in Africa and around the world. The magic of it is that the latter never comes at the expense of the former, one enhancing the other. At times Saturday he and his band showcased the Fulani and Wolof culture of Senegal with compelling effect, often with talking drum wiz Massamba Diop center stage. But they took full advantage of the various connections, whether the delicate pointillism of “Mbaye Mbaye,” drawn from the music of Mauritania (Senegal’s Saharan neighbor) or “Africa Woman,” a full-on Afro-Cuban (or Cubano-African) workout spotlighting both the heritage of two band members (drummer Raul Penda and percussionist Jesus Diaz) and the inextricable connections originated in the slave transport across the Atlantic. And it even got Afro-U2 with the anthemic “Lampenda,” from the recent album, on which members of Mumford & Sons contributed.

The peak came with the next song, the appropriately titled “Fulani Rock,” a keening blast of electric Sahel blues from guitarist Khalifa Balde propelling the song’s compelling force that had Maal dancing exuberantly across the stage. He wasn’t the only one in the space dancing.

There was also a lot of dancing for opener L.A. trio Classixx (essentially two DJs and a vibraphone player, though the latter was often buried in the sample-heavy mix) and more so for Brazilian Girls’ middle set, the latter four-piece’s brand of internationalism a good complement to Maal’s. Sciubba (also an actress of late, with the role of Zach Galifianakis’ wife in the dark comedy FX series “Baskets”) has always been the center of attention for the band in its sporadic run dating back to the late ’90s, her confidently sly and slinky presence and her accented, pitch-wavering speak-sing — somewhere between Nico and Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier — the signature. But the music, spanning house electronica pulsation (again at times a la Stereolab) and perky pop (once or twice bumping against Belle and Sebastian, or Nena) was winning as well Saturday, particularly as it avoids the sterile approach that can often plague such things. And while there’s nothing explicitly Brazilian about it (nor are any of the band members from there), at times the percolating rhythms turned the scene into something akin to a Bahia beach party.

Ultimately it was that joy of traveling, that sense of discovery Maal promoted so passionately, that won out. From Senegal to Century City, with open spirit.