It was an historic night with King Sunny Ade - the kind of show at which the waitress danced through the aisles.

The Nigerian juju musician, of the Yoruba tribe, shared the Shank Hall stage Thursday with opening-act Obi Osadebe, son of legendary high-life musician Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe. Osadebe is Ibo, and before this tour, Ibo and Yoruba musicians at their level had not performed together anywhere since the Nigerian civil war of 1966.

The highlight of Thursday's concert was witnessing a Nigerian tradition called "spraying" not often seen this side of the Atlantic. In the spirit of the tradition, audience members came on stage and sprinkled dollar bills over Ade's head and shoulders.

The musician and his 14-piece band responded with broad smiles and praise singing - extolling the virtues of sprayer and community - amid 45-minute grooves nearly indescribable in their complexity and beauty.

The 58-year-old Ade skated, shimmied and strutted across the stage in sparkling black and gold traditional garb, strumming a guitar. The all-male band followed his every move, and during the rare spaces between songs, the band called out and chanted.

"Africa, we are proud of you," Ade sang, as Fatoke's lap steel screamed trademark riffs. Backup singers Femi and Matthew (Yoruba names involve lineages and complicated suffixes, so a representative gave only first names), who have been with Ade for three decades, wove gorgeous, throaty three-part harmonies - when they weren't plucking dollars off Ade's shoulders and forehead.

That the group's togetherness and precision equal any Western orchestra, and the arrangements feel as complex and funky as bebop masters such as John Coltrane, belies the simplicity of this music. From the first seconds, as drummers took the stage one by one - drum kit, three talking drums, congas, maracas - the room began to pulse, to breathe as a single being. Songs that last hours in Nigeria were shorter.

But the sound of feet, or even a portentous silence between songs, kept the groove going. Just as translating Ade's lyrics into English often comes to naught, Western concepts of rhythm and meter fall apart when applied to this sound. Measured in beats per minute, King Sunny Ade scores 1,000.

Opening act Osadebe performed an hourlong set featuring virtuoso guitar playing and the singer's warm, smoky baritone.

-Thacher Schmid