This year’s African Soul Rebels tour boasted two of the continent’s most powerful acts. But it was the outfit in the middle, ­South Africa’s Kalahari Surfers, that proved the most subversive.

Tucked behind a desk strewn with laptops and turntables, the trio mixed electro dub and drum’n’bass with lyrics that challenged, probed and borrowed from ANC speeches; dreadlocked Teba Shumba delivered dramatic sub-commentary in Zulu and tongue-clicking Xhosa. The wallop it packed was too much for some in the largely white crowd, for whom African music isn’t African music without djembes and polyrhythms.

Benin’s funky 10-piece Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou provided all this and more. Their energetic opening set wove Afrobeat, Cuban music and their country’s voudoun rhythms into a sort of West African Motown review.

Dressed in matching shirts and the occasional flat cap, with a brass section underpinned by furious cowbell, they displayed the spirit that has propelled them since 1968 and ran, suitably rebelliously, over time.

Headline act Oumou Sangare strode on stage with glitter in her hair and fire in her voice, which flew over a backing band on guitars, drums, flute and the jittery kamelengoni hunters harp from her homeland in Wassoulou, southern Mali.

All three bands piled on for her chaotic encore, Wele Wele Wintou, a criticism of child brides, in which Shumba toasted as Sangare soared.