Africa is front and centre this weekend at Harbourfront and the all-day Bana Y' Afrique festival on Sunday in Nathan Phillips Square. 

Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz one of the continents best bands, like Senegal’s Orchestre Baobab and Mali’s Super Rail Band, shows how great West African dance bands can preserve traditions yet simultaneously create a modern sound, with Afro-Cuban elements of the mid-19^th century helping bridge heritage music and modern instrumentation.

Bembeya music sparkles swings and makes any normal human want to dance, with its high-pitched singers, fiery horns, insistent guitars and, of course, a powerhouse rhythm section.

The band plays the main stage tomorrow, day one of Harbourfront’s Hot and Spicy Festival.

There’s a new self titled album (on the World Village label), Bembeya’s first in 14 years, that’s a major landmark in Afro-pop history.  

It highlights the signature, driving four- guitar section- listen to them crank it up on “Soli Au Wassoulou.”  The exceptional bandleader and lead guitarist Sekou Bembeya Diabate (known as “diamond fingers”) is in charge.

He even plays Hawaiian slide guitar.

Notable bandsmen are the three singers, especially high tenor Salifou Kabe and Doumbouya Alseny, who’s particularly appealing on “Sabou,” tenor saxist Dory Clement, trumpeter and musical director Mohamed Kasba and drummer Conde Mory Mangala.

These instrumentalists have been with the b and from its 1961 birth in Beyla, the town through which runs the Bembeya River.  Bembeya Jazz was named Guinea’s national band in 1965.

-Geoff Chapman