Now in its fourth year, the African Soul Rebels tour has become a brand name in world music circles, a sort of Motherland Revue with a sting. The current road show is the most radical yet, with a triple bill united only by their leftfield leanings and West African origins.

The best came first: Senegalese hip hop pioneer Awadi. A founding member of Positive Black Soul, one of the best rap outfits in a crowded Dakar scene, Awadi has spent a couple of decades mixing contemporary American soul with conscious lyrics and the traditional music of Senegal.

Backed by a seven-piece band featuring psychedelic keyboards and a virtuoso on the kora - surely the most priapic instrument to visit rap yet - he had all the raw dynamism of a star in the making.

Turning on a dime from ballad to hip hop, funk to soul, and with the obligatory Bob Marley refrain thrown in, he rapped in Wolof, French and English about African history and political corruption. "George Bush is a criminal! Give me another criminal!" he exhorted, shoving his mic in the front row, in a different take on traditional call-and-response.

He sings and dances gloriously, too. Salif Keita, the man most had come to see, was next.

After receiving a standing ovation for falling to his knees at his mic-stand (overcome, perhaps, by the fact that his hero, David "Pink Floyd" Gilmour, was present), the Malian Caruso delivered a low-key acoustic set at odds with his usual electric spectaculars.

Buoyed by a range of traditional instruments - ngoni, kalabash, congas - he picked at a guitar and let his reined-in voice soar prettily.

Headlining, curiously, was Tony Allen, the Nigerian drummer beloved of Damon Albarn and famed for his ability to play different time signatures with each limb simultaneously.

A former member of Fela Kuti's Africa 70, Allen has long been held as the co-creator of Afrobeat, that funky hybrid of jazz and Yoruba rhythms.

But perched behind his raised drum kit in bandanna and dark glasses, singing lacklustrely, Allen seemed distant and off-limits. Though in his own way, rather rebellious.