Baaba Maal performs at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta. $25-$50.

Orchestra Baobab performs at 8 p.m. April 10 at the Rialto. $20-$45. 404-651-4727, www.rialtocenter.org

When Senegalese rhythm guitarist Latfi Bengeloune comes to the United States, he listens to the jumble of languages in Times Square, the ever-present sounds of automobiles coming and going, the rhythms of daily American life --- and he hears music.

In his home country, however, the music he hears is less an inadvertent collage of everyday sounds and more of a cultural outpouring. Walking outside, he can hear children playing tom-toms, adults singing political songs. It's not uncommon to come across a musical street festival celebrating a wedding, a meal, a childbirth. And, everywhere, he sees dancing.

In West Africa, music transcends entertainment, and thus the members of Bengeloune's group, Orchestra Baobab, transcend their roles as entertainers.

"In our countries," Bengeloune says, "we are something like messengers."

In the next five weeks, two of Senegal's most notable messengers will make their way to Atlanta. Orchestra Baobab, the legendary Afro-Cuban ensemble, will perform April 10 at the Rialto. Saturday, that same venue will play host to superstar vocalist Baaba Maal.

Such stateside performances largely serve to expose West African music and culture to American audiences. But for the handful of West African immigrants in attendance, the performances offer a rare and treasured reunion with that same music, that same culture.

"I cannot find myself in American music, to tell you the truth," says 34-year-old Yacin Abdur-Rahman, an East Point resident who came to this country from Senegal in 2002.

"When I was young, I used to hear about James Brown, Aretha Franklin, roots, folk and all that stuff. And I can tell you music is universal, but I may tell you that there is a difference."

The difference is partly sonic --- no one would confuse a Baobab or Maal song for American music, even though both artists have internalized American R&B --- but it has more to do with the larger cultural associations that African music carries.

"For the typical African," says Mfon Ufot, a Nigerian immigrant who co-hosts the African Experience Worldwide program Saturday afternoons on WRFG (89.3 FM), "we sing when we are happy, we sing when we are sad. Music, especially when you tie it to folklore, is how we pass on our history, we pass on information. We also pass on the culture to the next generation."

Thus, the idea of the musician as messenger. But what of the musician as musician? At a certain point, for American listeners unfamiliar with African languages, Orchestra Baobab and Baaba Maal become less about the lyrical message and more about the sound and feel and ambience of the music itself.

Jazz and reggae fans already have a frame of reference for the music Baobab and Maal create. Like those two genres, the Senegalese pop coming to Atlanta is deeply invested in the notion of the groove. Though some of the artists' vocals seem to dart around in unpredictable melodies, the drum patterns and crystal-clear guitar work provide a recognizable and entrancing point of entry. The music gives off a tropical feeling --- both artists trace influences to the music of Cuba, which has a beat similar to that in African music.

"When people play Cuban music here in Africa," Maal says, "you don't care about the language or even the melody . . . You can just get up and dance on it, like with us in Africa."

For Baobab and Maal, dancing is not supplementary, something reserved for backup singers and the most enthusiastic audience members. Dancing is, in fact, the final component in an African music that Princeton University professor Kofi Agawu describes as "incomplete in principle, because it demands completion by the listener, by the participant."

Agawu, who teaches an introductory course on African music, educates his students on the importance of the rhythm. It is not, as it might be in a simple rock song, a mere background --- a kind of fancy metronome over which an electric guitarist lays down the real notes of interest. West African rhythm is a kind of welcome mat, an invitation into music.

"Music that does not invite you is music that is objectlike. It has a very clear beginning, a very clear middle, a very clear ending. And you, as listeners, are asked to contemplate it," Agawu says, using Mozart's music for quartet as an example.

"Music that invites you is music that doesn't give you everything. It doesn't tell you everything you need to know."

So the listener is invited to actively engage with the music, which often means filling the void with dance. The participatory song structures, combined with the intensely rhythmic nature of the music, can make African music seem, to impatient American ears, interminable.

For a knowledgeable listener, however, it can induce a kind of rapture.

"When we play here, for example, in Africa, it's very different," Maal says. "So the people who come to see the concert are part of the concert. Sometimes you can go jump on the stage, dance with us."

With this kind of response, the artists have a platform from which to tackle the grandest topics. When Maal sings his song "African Woman," for example, Ufot interprets it as a song for all African women. His song "Miyaabele" is about unifying the entire continent.

"It has been a long time people are saying, 'Yeah, we have to make Africa like one big country,' " Maal says, "but in that song I was saying it's possible to have the unity of Africa, but you have to start by the music. You have to start by the culture. Because this is where all African people are connected. With the music, we don't have barriers."

For many American listeners, of course, there is a language barrier. Maal sings in French, English, Wolof and Pulaar. But much of his audience communication comes through nonverbal cues, be it dancing or simply the symbolic, brilliantly colored clothes he wears on stage.

"Africa is a continent which is facing a lot of problems," he says. "AIDS, food, lack of education --- all that. But at the same time we have a lot of energy here . . . We have all this nice style of food, of costume, of embroideries or designs on the clothes, colors --- which means, yes, we are poor, we have a lot of problems facing a lot of [people]. But at the same time we have hope. We have smiling. You see, that comes from the color, from the costumes, from saying, 'I'm alive. I'm alive.' "

For Orchestra Baobab's Bengeloune, the music itself says more than he ever could.

"Without a guitar," Bengeloune says, "I'm only a human being with my words going out my mouth. When I'm a musician, I use an instrument. And the way I use my instrument can catch you and tell you exactly what I want to say deep in my heart and in my soul."