There are few icons of African music who have generated as much acclaim and affection as juju pioneer King Sunny Ade.

At 61, the veteran guitarist-singer has earned the nickname "minister of entertainment" at home in Nigeria for creating an irresistible funky groove and message which -- befitting his name -- is positively sunny.

It's also true that his big African Beats band -- 15-strong on the current tour, which comes to Bluesfest Friday -- creates such a wonderfully hypnotic feel with their dense, percolating polyrhythms that they are known less for playing tunes and more for stretching out "40-minute jams."

But don't be fooled into thinking that Ade is just about having a good time. From personal experience, he is very aware of music's power to create change and inspire calm.

Ade recalls how only a decade ago Nigeria, a West African nation of 150 million people, was in the throes of rebellion under a military dictatorship.

"I've always felt that it is better to sit down and discuss the issues instead of starting a fight over them. The tensions were so high between the military and the public, no one knew what to do, so I called my artists together and composed a song, singing it in the different languages of Nigeria."

The song was a simple call for peace.

"I sang that this was our country and that we didn't want their aggression, that we couldn't be killing each other, that they were the head and we are the tail and that the two of us needed each other. We released it and basically gave it away for free. It was played all over radio and television, and everybody cooled down immediately."

All this is not so surprising in a place where music plays a stronger role in everyday life than it commonly does in North America. For Ade, it began as fun, playing percussion in his hometown of Ondo, and became a career after he went to Nigeria's capital Lagos in his late teens. After initially taking a spot playing a style called high life, he switched to guitar and struck out to form his own group The Green Spots.

Call him a pioneer and Ade is humble enough to remind you that there were a few others before him, and that the sound known as juju is actually the modern variation on an ancient roots music he inherited from his Yoruba ancestors. Given that, by the time he had changed the name of his band to the Golden Beats and then African Beats in the 1970s, Ade was leading a movement to reinvent those traditional sounds by using the new instruments he heard in imported American music to mimic original West African instruments.

This gave Ade's sound a built-in accessibility factor for fresh ears when his band became one of the first African acts to tour widely in Europe and North America in the 1970s and '80s. With the release of his landmark album Juju Music in 1982, Ade became one of the first stars of world music before that term had common usage.

Ade and his African Beats made their Edmonton debut in one of the first concerts held in the University of Alberta's Butterdome around 1984, a great dance gig that featured Jamaica's Black Uhuru as opening guests.

In the decades since, Ade has maintained a steady career, usually putting out three or four albums in Nigeria for every album geared to international release.

For his current 25-date tour of North America, Ade says he's trying out new material that the band will record in an American studio during their visit. But he promises a few of his older hits as he continues to spread his enduring message: "Let peace reign on this planet."