When most people use the phrase “classical music,” they are referring to the type of music played by symphony orchestras, the typical “three B’s” and their kind. But this body of music is only the classical music of European and American traditions; in truth, every world culture has its own “classical music,” i.e., its own indigenous music-making that has been handed down for generations since the dawn of memory. It is these classical music traditions that San Diego’s Center for World Music fosters and celebrates.

Friday (Nov. 30) at the Neurosciences Institute, the Center presented a sampler of three African national traditions, a taste of native musical and dance styles of Ghana, Senegal and Zimbabwe, as well as a demonstration of how the Center’s own students and teachers have learned the idiom of these traditions. The local ensemble Ho-Asogli, four dancers and five instrumentalists, brought the traditions of Ghana to life, under the tutelage and vibrant example of Kwame Degbor, a master teacher from Ghana in local residence for the last years under the auspices of the Center.

Tall and lithe, Degbor propelled himself around the small stage of the Neurosciences Auditorium with such ease and elegance that I suspected he had been outfitted with some high-tech anti-gravity device. The three young American women who danced with him had clearly mastered all the steps and moves of their joyful harvest dance, but they seemed to be weighed down by this exertion, while Degbor only became more effervescent as the ritual progressed. While these dancers were accompanied with ample percussion ostinatos, especially drums and shakers, flutes of various designs added colorful melodies. In a separate piece, a quartet of equal-length bamboo flutes began with a slow, plaintive theme that quickly worked itself into rapid motivic volleys of great energy. Leading the drummers of Ho-Asogli was San Diego State University music professor John Flood, a traditionally trained western percussionist who has traveled regularly since 1993 to Western Africa to learn their drumming styles. The zeal of these San Diego performers and their love of this exotic music communicated well to the ample audience, largely comprised of university-aged members.

Sene Africa, a duo of singer-guitarist Ibrahima Ba and Amadou Fall, a virtuoso performer on the kora harp-lute, brought the flavor of Senegalese music to the program. The kora, a West African instrument shaped like a sitar but held perpendicular to the player’s torso (think holding a machine gun), and plucked with both hands, projects brilliant, rapid figurations in a close melodic range. Fall, who comes from a family of kora performers, provided ecstatic countermelodies to Ba’s rich, slightly nasal vocal style. Ba’s amplified guitar strumming sounded conspicuously western, however, and there was no dancing to their music.

After intermission, we left West Africa and traveled to Zimbabwe to hear the Masongano Mbira Trio offer several instrumental solos in the Shona tradition. The mbira, sometimes called the “thumb piano,” has a metallic sound that is quite penetrating considering how small an instrument it is. The three members of the Trio, all from the Center, included San Diego State University musicologist Lewis Peterman, who alternated on mbira and gourds. During one of the Trio’s extended pieces, Degbor came stage center to improvise a lively dance and even invited an audience member from the front row to come on stage and join him. His charm and tutelage were more than infectious.

The program’s finale involved a quintet playing more mbira music on five modern African marimbas, according to the program notes a modernizing trend that is now popular in Zimbabwe. The greater sonic power of these large marimbas, including a wonderfully resonant bass marimba, gave this music a larger-than-life quality, a village fiesta on stage. The slightly buzzy metallic resonators of these marimbas distanced them from the more smooth and refined sound of the western orchestral marimba, perhaps a more earthy, quality appropriate to the roots of these ancient traditions.