If other music pulses in the tropic in-and-out fashion of a lava lamp, King Sunny Ade's Nigerian juju tunes rocket across space like striations of magma geysering through splits in the planet surface according to a pounding hot pressure of the volcanic core.

In fewer words, get out of the way or prepare to be shook.

A throng of milling Afrophiles, resident Africans and curious hipsters who scarcely could have known better got tossed into a vibrating jumble by this geothermal phenomenon Friday, 19 June, at the Independent in San Francisco. The only survivors had to be doused in a gallon of their own sweat before their jostling necks and quaking in the lower parts could be sent toward remission. Here is an account, gathered from on-site observers, of what was happening just before the thunderous episode unfolded:

King Sunny Ade and his African Beats took the stage shortly after 10 pm, the bandleader wearing a lustrous pajamas patterned with what appeared to be liquor bottles -- while his ensemble came robed in more subdued green and red zigzag affairs.

The King unleashed his well-known sexual majesty more than one time: in the form of ribald duck-walks, knee-knocking and a rather spermatic mime-dance performed in collusion with the buoyant and shivering lady dancers called onstage several times in hopes that they might absorb the more dangerous of those sonic rumblings.

One moment a member of the women's team became charmed, as a rather thick cobra, into a slowed-down version of the great juju rhythm by Sunny Ade's own guitarist as he pulled his weapon in deep loops through the air; but at the next moment she would be struck again into ecstatic movement as the hammering theme caught up several rests later with the soloist.

In these pauses of near calm those looking on, you protest, ought to have fled the scene and save their tired thighs for later. But these innocents were just as mesmerized, you see, enchanted by such vocal harmonies as King Sunny himself -- with his chorus on the right and left, and the electric organ -- could wind between the drums' persistent oratory. "Africa ... Africa," he sang, "Oh ohhh Africa and America...."

Experts disagree, but it is believed a brief collision of these two continents may have been responsible for the seismic disturbance.