Jaojoby

African popular music experienced its own ‘60s revolution when the kids plugged in and turned up. Across the continent, electric guitars and drum kits rocked the dancehalls and airwaves with astonishingly fresh styles, funneling the vast, deep cache of folkloric sounds through Western instrumentation. The wave eventually crossed the Mozambique Channel and reached the most isolated African capital, Antananarivo, the cultural and political center of the Big Red Island, Madagascar. The first homegrown electrification project that captured the collective Malagasy imagination was salegy, an afterburning array of 6/8 and 12/8 rhythms that originated in the island’s northern reaches. Since the late ‘80s, Eusébe Jaojoby has been the music’s standard-bearer. His brand-new disc, proudly titled Malagasy, jumps with a supremely seductive jolt of salegy energy. The beats rain down from the get-go, the mixed-up threes and fours pushing the guitar-crazed groove momentum relentlessly forward in all directions. After the initial shock of unfamiliarity eases, the untrained body adjusts to the crisscrossing rhythms and sweetly bold harmonies, embracing the music’s undulation potential. Jaojoby says he’s a James Brown fan, so the catch phrase for the first L.A. visit of this traveling Malagasy dance party could well be “Get up now, get on up!” Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., W.L.A.; Thurs., Aug. 12, 8 p.m.; free ($5 parking). (310) 440-4500.

—Tom Cheyney