Hearing the comment again makes Habib Koite laugh, and why wouldn't it? No other musician in Africa, let alone any other continent, can claim to have inspired Bonnie Raitt to utter, "I would drink your sweat," but that's what Raitt reportedly said after seeing him play in Los Angeles several years ago.

"She's very funny," Koite says in a phone interview. "I call her 'grand sister.' She's very cool. Each time I come to California, she visits me backstage, and we go to eat together."

Raitt may be Koite's most visible supporter in the United States, where Koite has carved out a surprisingly large fan base in the past five years. Koite, who performs Thursday through Saturday in the Bay Area, is one of many Malian musicians who have established themselves in the West, but Koite is the only one whose songs incorporate native Malian traditions with a kaleidoscope of other influences, including jazz, rock and classical (Koite studied Bach and Beethoven in school). The result is a music that sounds familiar but is its own hybrid. Even people who know nothing about West Africa are drawn to Koite's sound -- which is why he's one of the few African artists who's played on "Late Show With David Letterman," and one of the few who has fans from Estonia (the former Russian republic, where he's performed) to Japan (where he's also performed).

At age 45, Koite spends as much time touring the world as he does at home in Mali's capital of Bamako, but he seems to like it that way. He has become a kind of roving ambassador for his country, delighting in the way that he can play a catchy song like "Cigarette Abana" (an anti-cigarette track that is one of Koite's best known) and have people sing along whether it's in Paris or New York. In the United States, Koite first became popular when the Putumayo label (whose motto is music that's "guaranteed to make you feel good!") showcased his albums. It's a sign of how far Koite has come that other labels have rushed to release his music, including World Village, which just put out a live two-album recording called "Foly!"

Koite says he feels humbled by his success. By birth he's a griot -- someone who, because of his lineage in Mali, was supposed to uphold his family's ancestral role as musical storytellers. At the height of the Malian empire, which ruled West Africa for centuries, griots wandered around their native land by foot and on animals. None of the previous griots in Koite's family ever left Africa, but Koite changed that tradition. That he's traveled so far beyond Mali's borders continues to surprise him.

"I'm lucky," he says. "I'm lucky."

Koite, who is a secular Muslim, grew up listening to Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. In the 1970s, black American artists were big in Mali, a landlocked country that's divided into widely varying regions and ethnic groups. The country's desert-oriented north, where Kel Tamashek people (sometimes referred to as Tuareg) are concentrated, is radically different, for example, from the southern Wassoulou region, where traditional hunter societies live. As he learned to sing and play guitar around Mali, Koite practiced practically every style of music in his country. At one club it would be Wassoulou music; at the next club it would be Bamana (which is up- tempo and influenced by Islamic music). All the time, Koite would get requests to play a Hendrix song or one from James Brown. Koite's voice is smooth and reassuring, much like his guitar playing.

"Usually, musicians in Mali play the music of their own ethnic group, but I try to play every style of music because I have a lot of experience with many types of music," he says.

Koite didn't reach stardom until relatively late in life. At age 30, he was working as a music professor at Bamako's National Institute of Arts. Around the same time, he formed his own group, and three years later, Koite won first prize at a French music festival. He won enough money from that to pay for the recording of two songs in Mali, one of which was "Cigarette Abana, " whose lyrics ("At last he tries a cigarette but gets sick and says, 'No more cigarettes' ") helped make the track a hit around West Africa, where Western cigarette companies had inundated people with ads. After that, Koite won a major French prize, which led to concerts in Europe, full-fledged albums and a slow but steady fan base beyond Paris and Brussels.

When he performs tonight in San Francisco, Friday night in Sebastopol and Saturday night in Santa Cruz, Koite will welcome concertgoers who have seen him many times and others who were prompted by word of mouth or recent TV specials such as PBS' "The Blues." The PBS series showcased Koite in the segment directed by Martin Scorsese, who spotlighted the connection between blues music and the music of Mali. American slaves from Mali brought with them instrument patterns that are still evident in the blues. Koite's musicians, all of whom are from Mali, play traditional instruments like ngoni (a plucked lute) and balafon (which is a kind of wooden xylophone), but they also use instruments associated with Western tastes, such as the violin and harmonica.

"I'm not a traditional griot," Koite says. "I try to take traditional music and mix it with my spirit and my imagination."