“Are you ready to go on a musical journey?” asked Dee Dee Bridgewater, dressed First Class in sequins and leopard print, her bald head polished to a sheen. “As we say in Bambara, an ka taa’. Let’s go!”

Bridgewater would later admit that she doesn’t actually speak the dialect of her ancestors in Mali, West Africa. Which didn’t matter: musically, she was fluent.

Backed by a transatlantic nine-piece on everything from jazz piano and double bass to kora, balafon and other Malian instruments, Bridgewater fused two deep cultures and had them speaking like old friends.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee (a fact she belted, blues-style, in counterpoint to the griot Kabine Kouyate’s astounding baritone), Bridgewater has worked with greats like Dizzy and Sonny and had a hit show dedicated to Billie. She’s done rock and funk, cabaret and chanson but it’s jazz that suits her strong, cool voice and independent spirit.

Her Red Earth project, the Grammy-nominated result of a trip to Africa in 2004, is both a musical family tree and an inspired meeting of minds.

Ancient songs from the griot canon were re-imagined, jazzedup. A new version of Afro Blue thundered with djembe, tama and kit drums. Oumou Sangare’s Djarabi — retitled Oh My Love and sung as a duet with the sweetly nasal Mamani Keita — was joyously rhythmic. Though Bridgewater’s contributions in English occasionally sounded a little twee, musical ideas and exchanges dazzled, particularly on a reading of Wayne Shorter’s Footprints and the English/ scat/Bambara song Dee Dee.

“You’re not dancing,” she’d said, a little hurt. Nonetheless, as the night’s riotous standing ovation proved, this really was some ride.