WHAT is it about African bands and the Harrogate International Festival?

Two years ago, the arrival of the sunshine music of Senegal's Orchestra Baobab had been greeted with storms, forcing a last-minute change of venue from the venerable, vulnerable Royal Hall to the swish International Centre.

Last night, it was the turn of Guinea's Bembeya Jazz, whose festival debut appearance was met with what passes for a monsoon in these northern climes. Outside, raindrops fell, the size of frogs; inside, the auditorium was so hot, the clammy heat could have burst a tomato skin.

Just what you need then: a supreme West African dance band whose irresistible rhythms and melodious joyfulness have you itching to leave your seat...if only you had the energy. Maybe it was cooler in the stalls, where a posse of girls danced in the aisles.

Harrogate International Festival has built up an impressive world music strand under the direction of festival director William Culver-Dodds, not least with the African Voices showcase of two years ago, when the newly re-formed Orchestra Baobab had been an inspired choice. Baobab had regrouped, recharged and reinvigorated after 20 years, and likewise Bembeya Jazz have reunited after a long hiatus.

They are similarly revitalised, as happy as lambs at play, delighting in the pleasure of playing together once more, with the dazzling guitar work of leader Sekou Bembeya Diabate living up to his billing of Diamond Fingers. Twice, once in each half, those fingers went to off-piste jazz work, creating the sound of bubble-rap popping in his first extemporisation, and giving Jimi Hendrix's intense fretwork a run for its money in the increasingly ad- hoc second set.

The six-piece bantered in French, testing the dusty O-level memories of the audience and losing the concert's momentum in the finale, when it became more like a James Brown love-in. However, any self-indulgence can be forgiven when the night of Cuban-flavoured African jazz has had the sweet singing of M'Bemba Camara, the saxophone swagger of Mamadou Aliou Barry and the trumpet flights of fancy of Mohamed Achken Kaba. What a Diamond night it was.

Updated: 11:06 Wednesday, August 04, 2004