Staff Benda Bilili’s new album is called Bouger la Monde!, or Shake the World. Sadly, only a few dozen people showed up for the Congolese octet’s Los Angeles debut Wednesday night at El Rey Theater, but those in attendance were certainly shaking – and shimmying and bouncing and dancing – to the joyous sounds coming from the stage.

Staff Benda Bilili plays a variation on the Congolese rumba, a rhythm that has made multiple trips from Africa to the New World and back. It can be heard in Cuban jazz, Jamaican reggae and other Caribbean styles, and the Creole funk of New Orleans, all of which shows up in their music. But just as important is the band’s story.

A one-time street outfit, SBB is built around the vocals of five singers, all disabled by polio – four in wheelchairs, one on crutches, with a foreshortened leg that hung limply. They’re backed by a rhythm section comprising homeless teens, including Roger Lantu, who plays a one-string lute of his own devising.

They started busking at the zoo in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, were soon discovered, became superstars on the world music circuit and got signed to Crammed Discs, the taste-making Belgian label that also released the sensational amplified kalimba band, Congotronics No.1. (For those who are interested, this story is well-covered in the award-winning documentary Benda Bilili!)

At the El Rey, they danced in their wheelchairs, danced with their wheelchairs – a kind of wheelie’d do-si-do – and sang buoyant melodies in rough, sweet harmony. Coco Ngambali and Theo Nsituvuidi play the kind of dry, fluttery guitar lines familiar to anyone who has listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland or Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. Randy Buda plays a kit with tom-toms that look to be carved out of tree stumps, a can for a cymbal and a wooden box with with metal for snares that he also kicks for a bass drum.

But Staff Benda Bilili’s most distinctive element is Roger Lantu’s satonge. Fashioned from a tin can and a wooden bow, with just a single string, it adds a horn-like sound that can wail like Carlos Santana and howl like John Coltrane, and which gracefully skips across rhythms like a flat-tossed stone.

It all came together for a performance here that was as life-affirming and jubilant as anything you’ve experienced. Southern Californians might have slept on this show, but if you’re smart, you’ll make sure to join the party when they return.