Talk about your worldwind tours.

First, Malian singer-guitarist Habib Koité is in Amsterdam, performing “Muso Ko,” the title track from his 1995 debut CD.

A moment later, he’s entertaining a crowd in Cremona, Italy with “Sirata,” from his 1998 release, “Ma Ya.”

The applause barely dies down in Italy when Koité is mesmerizing concert-goers in Zurich, Switzerland with “Batoumambe” from his 2001 album “Baro.”

Of course, accomplishing such a time/space-defying feat takes some magic – and in this case there’s a lot of it packaged in a new two-CD set, “Foly! Live Around the World” (World Village).  Rather than presenting a single concert, the album features 18 tracks culled from 10 stops on Koité’s 2002 European tour.

The approach seems appropriate, considering the global buzz Koité and his band have been generating since going international in the mid-1990s.  The group has performed more than 600 shows around the world over the past eight years, including nearly 70 in the Unites States – and counting.

Koité has just returned to promote “Foly!” and will perform Tuesday at McCarter Theatre in Princeton.  Hassan Hakmoun, a vocalist and sintar (lute0 player, from Morocco will share the bill.

Koité said he’s moved by the reception he gets from audiences outside his native Mali, where he has been part of the music scene for two decades.

“The audience makes me feel very proud,” says Koité, speaking recently by cell phone from Mali during a rehearsal break.

“It is very gratifying for me to see the support, to have some (audience members) who stay long after the concert to meet me and have me sign CDs.”

Among Koité’s growing ranks of fans are such notables as Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt who invited the musician to sing on her album, “Silver Lining.”

After graduating from the National Institute of Arts in Bamako, Mali, in 1982, Koité played with a variety of famed Malian musicians before forming Bamaka in 1988.  (The name, a slang word for the residents of Bamako, roughly translates as “in the mouth of the crocodile.”)

While his music is deeply steeped in tradition, the guitarist employs blues, flamenco and Afro-Cuban flavors in his music.  He tunes and plays his guitar similar to the traditional four-stringed kamala n’goni, an instrument associated with hunters from the Wassolou region of his West African homeland that he learned about from his African homeland that he learned about from his grandfather.  He developed his guitar skills by accompanying his mother, a griot – of traditional folk singer/ historian.

Koité said he is very concerned about keeping Mali’s music alive, lamenting that many young people in his own country may know more about Western pop and rock than their own country’s heritage.

“We don’t have certain things, like technology, but there are things that we are the ones to have,” he says.  “If we lose them, they will be lost not only for us, but for the whole world.”

Many of Koité’s songs actively promote Mali’s culture, people and landscape.  His prominent style of playing is based on the danssa, a popular rhythm from his native city of Keyes.  He calls his version “danssa doso,” the latter part of the phrase referring to Mali’s ancient hunters’ music.

“I put these two words together to symbolize the music of all ethnic groups in Mali,” he says.  “I’m curious about all the music in the world, but I make music from Mali.”

“In my country, we have so many beautiful rhythms and melodies.  Many villages and communities have their own kind of music,” he continues.  “Usually, Malian musicians play only their own ethnic music, but me, I go everywhere.  My job is to take all these traditions and to make something with them, to use them in my music.”