Under the Civic Theatre's serene artificial starlight sky, Ladysmith Black Mambazo brought a taste of African culture to Akron.

In front of a diverse, multigenerational audience, the 10-man South African a cappella group filled the theater with the distinctive harmonies and dances of their Zulu homeland in a 90-plus-minute set.

With five basses, two tenors, two altos and founder Joseph Shabalala's lead voice, the group's sound is unmistakably African but has become more familiar to Westerners since Paul Simon used the group on his 1986 Graceland album. That album brought him back to the top of the pop charts and introduced the Grammy-winning group's traditional Zulu style of singing called isicathamiya to a wider audience.

Friday night, dressed in white sneakers, red socks, black pants and multicolored dashikis, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, singing in Zulu and occasionally in English, entertained a nearly full house.

The group opened with the title track from their latest CD on the Cleveland-based label Heads Up: Raise Your Spirit Higher: Wenyukela.

The bulk of the songs adhered to a basic structure: A call-and-response, often lyrically dense intro between Shabalala and the rest of the group would settle into a chant, over which the leader would improvise, and all would perform dance steps.

During these dances, the camaraderie (members include Shabalala cousins and sons) was infectious as they free-lanced dance steps and playfully teased one another, adding a bit of shtick to the proceedings.

The Civic's acoustics helped the voices ring clear throughout the theater, even when their often-highly animated dancing forced them to abandon their microphones.

Subjects included songs about the beauty of South Africa (Selingelethu Sonke), an English sung plea to get better acquainted with a woman (Hello My Baby), some traditional Zulu wedding and work songs, and Graceland's Homeless, which Shabalala co-wrote with Simon.

Shabalala told the audience the group's mission is to share a bit of Zulu culture with the world, and a few thousand Akronites went home from the show with a few Zulu words rolling off their tongues.