South African band set to make it in America

FRESHLYGROUND

At: Brighton Music Hall, Monday, 9 p.m. Tickets: $20 advance, $25 day of show. 617-876-4275, www.worldmusic.org

They were already big at home, in South Africa. Very big, in fact: born of a jam session on the small Cape Town scene in 2002, the seven-member Freshlyground has enjoyed, with its gently Africanized pop fusion, a string of local hit songs that convey sweetly earnest themes of uplift and harmony.

But it was in a studio in New York City in early 2010 that Freshlyground had the chance encounter that would catapult them into the global spotlight, as they happened to be mixing their latest album, “Radio Africa,’’ in the same building where producer John Hill was working on Shakira’s official anthem for soccer’s 2010 FIFA World Cup, the planet’s biggest sports event, which was to be held a few months later in South Africa.

The song was “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),’’ which saturated world airwaves during the Cup. Not atrociously corny as sports anthems go, it was credited to Shakira featuring Freshlyground; and with its almost suspiciously perfect multiracial lineup, the Cape Town band offered a better image of harmonious post-apartheid South Africa than any tourism board advertisement could.

But if the World Cup effect may have helped raise Freshlyground’s profile and spur its current 17-date North American tour — which visits the Brighton Music Hall on Monday — “Radio Africa,’’ the band’s fourth and musically richest album to date, goes well beyond mass-market pop fare.

With members from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, the band draws on instruments, language, and rhythms from all three countries. The winsome frontwoman Zolani Mahola sings in Xhosa and English. Simon Attwell, a white Zimbabwean, plays flute, kalimba, and the mbira or “thumb piano.’’ Julio Sigauque, from Mozambique, can unleash vicious Central African dancefloor guitar grooves.

Songs address lovers and parents, but also take on South Africa’s current scourges of unemployment, corruption, and crime.

“I had your baby in silence/ I never thought about the violence,’’ Mahola sings on one sorrowful, spare track that evokes love, abandonment, and maybe abuse. “Big Man’’ calls out politicians who have succumbed to materialism and corruption.