By Andrew Gilbert

Special to the Mercury News

``Bembeya Jazz was the lighthouse of West African music,'' says guitarist Sekou ``Diamond Fingers'' Diabaté. Now the lighthouse is shining once again.

After a 14-year-hiatus, the pioneering West African dance band made a dramatic return with the 2002's ``Bembeya'' (World Village), an exciting album featuring new songs and revamped versions of classics from the group's repertoire.

Now touring the world under Diabaté's leadership, the 12-piece Guinean band arrives in Northern California next week for a series of performances, including Wednesday and Thursday in Berkeley and July 23 in Santa Cruz.

Like Mali's Super Rail Band and Senegal's Star Band de Dakar, Bembeya harkens back to an era when Africa surged with optimism. As the first French colony on the sub-Saharan continent to gain independence, Guinea was at the forefront of the movement that sought to forge a new African identity by embracing traditional culture rather than following European models.

While the promise of independence has long since been eclipsed by war, unrest and corruption, the music created in the early 1960s continues to provide inspiration. And no group created a richer sound than Bembeya Jazz, which was founded in 1961 in the remote town of Beyla, near the southeastern border with Ivory Coast. Part of a cultural campaign launched by the president Ahmed Sékou Touré, the band was one of many started in a nation-building cultural program that sought to create a new Guinean sound.

``When independence happened, there was no Guinean music,'' Diabaté says in French, through a translator. ``It became necessary for us to work our culture, to develop music, dance, theater, so that Guinea could prove that it could offer something cultural at the world level.''

Though Guinea hadn't developed its own form of pop music in the days before independence, clubs in the cities featured French chanson and Cuban-influenced dance music. The country was rich, however, in folkloric styles, and Bembeya created a powerful sound by drawing on rhythms from throughout Guinea, particularly the Manding griot tradition.

``There are so many rhythms I don't remember all the names,'' says Diabaté, whose gorgeous new solo acoustic album, ``Guitar Fö'' (Diskorama), is distributed in the United States by Harmonia Mundi. ``There are four regions in Guinea, and each region has its peculiarity; there's an abundance of rhythms and melodies.''

In the capital, Conkary, the band often came out on top in battle-of-the-band contests pitting Bembeya against the Horoya Band, Keletigui et ses Tambourinis and Balla et ses Balladins.

By the late 1960s, Bembeya had largely created its trademark something-for-everyone sound, powered by founding drummer Conde Mory Mangala's relentless groove. With its four-guitar front line, three-part harmony vocals and hard-charging three-piece horn section, Bembeya combined sweet, soulful call-and-response choruses with tight, surging Afro-beat horn lines and Diabaté's chiming guitar licks, inspired by the intricately patterned sound of the kora and balafon.

For Diabaté, the band's success motivated it to stay a step ahead of the competition. ``When you're ahead, you can't fall asleep,'' he says. ``If you sleep, someone is going to race ahead of you. First, we were successful inside the country. Then, we traveled to neighboring countries, and we were successful everywhere. And that was why many, many, many young musicians today are the children of Bembeya Jazz.''

Despite Bembeya's success and influence, the band couldn't weather the economic changes that swept Guinea in the early 1980s. President Touré's decision to end state support for Guinea's dance bands left the group in a tight spot, particularly when it was competing with rising vocal stars, such as Sekouba ``Bambino'' Diabaté, who gained fame as a member of Bembeya.

By the end of the decade, the band was mostly defunct, and Sekou Diabaté began recording his own albums, such as his acclaimed acoustic disc ``Diamond Fingers.'' The band's reunion was sparked by a festival in Guinea celebrating the 100th anniversary of the French defeat of Guinean national hero Samory Touré, a gig that led eventually to the new album.

Bembeya Jazz

Where: Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz

When: 7 and 9 p.m. July 23

Tickets: $20, $24

Call: (831) 335-3207

Also: 9 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, $15, (510) 525-5054, www.ashkenaz.com