E-Mail This Article to a Friend Africa calling Johnny Clegg spearheads a July invasion BY BANNING EYRE

July appears to be African music month in Boston, with South African great Johnny Clegg hitting town for the first time since 1996, two other acts from southern Africa — Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo and Malagasy guitar wizard D’Gary — swinging through the area, and the legendary Guinean dance band Bembeya Jazz making their local debut. It all starts this Wednesday when Bembeya Jazz headline Johnny D’s in Somerville. Formed in 1962, Bembeya set the gold standard for independence-era bands in West Africa, revamping traditional music for the urban dance floor. The group reunited a few years back to produce a sterling recording, Bembeya (World Village), and their first US tour last summer offered a spectacle of electric-guitar interplay, rich vocal harmonies, and juggernaut grooves that only the Super Rail Band of Mali can match on the contemporary Afropop scene. That tour bypassed Boston, so this will be Bembeya’s first stop in the area.

Three nights later, on July 10, Johnny D’s welcomes back Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, who bravely spent this past winter in their strife-ridden home country. Their concerts offer a poignant, behind-the-headlines view of Zimbabwe’s struggle to emerge from the darkness of Robert Mugabe’s ever-more-tawdry regime. That Mapfumo manages to maintain a positive outlook and keep his music so sweet is a testament to his character. His band have been based out of Oregon for the past three years, but he plans to go back and live in Zimbabwe after this tour, so this may be your last chance in some time to catch him and his band live.

On July 21, Johnny D’s brings in D’Gary. Anyone keen on African guitar music knows that the continent has produced some truly inventive ax men, and none more innovative than D’Gary. Turned loose on an acoustic guitar, his picking fingers produce a breath-taking flood of rhythm and melody. His spare touring trio keep the spotlight on his guitar mastery, but the vocal harmonies and light, sprightly rhythms his two percussionists/vocalists provide are also a treat.

For all the African action Johnny D’s has planned, the big show of the month has to be the return — after eight years — of South African pop troubadour Johnny Clegg, who plays the Berklee Performance Center next Thursday. Clegg became a world-music legend in the ’70s and ’80s with his mastery of the Zulu language and Zulu guitar playing and dance and his ability to channel all that into topical, hook-laden pop songs. With his bands Juluka and Savuka, Clegg garnered worldwide fame and played many great Boston gigs. Now, after a hiatus, he says he wants to "relaunch" in the US, and he’s brought his new band to do a limited, exploratory tour. Speaking over the phone from Portland, Oregon, he says, "We’re just trading on good will. There’s no album, no profile, nothing. We’re touring in a publicity vacuum."

Clegg hasn’t released an album here in more than a decade, but he’s been anything but idle. Last year, he recorded what he calls a "pop rock" release, New World Survivor, that’s available only on his Web site, johnnyclegg.com. This summer’s shows include new arrangements of Juluka and Savuka classics, some new songs he’s preparing for an international release expected in the fall, and a handful of those "pop rock" songs. "We have a song called ‘Wanderers and Nomads.’ It’s really a look at how human, technical control of the environment has damaged our ability to live with and in nature. It seems the only way we can live with nature is by dominating it. The new South Africa is inheriting these kinds of attitudes from the developed West, this infatuation with technology. We’re embracing all this without any real critical reflection."

Clegg has never been afraid to address the big questions. One new song, "Into the Picture," imagines a "post-human" future where "we will be walking around with chips implanted into us that activate our cars, our houses, our cell phones. We will become part of our technical platform and leave the pure, organic human base behind. How do we feel about that?" Once a champion of young people, Clegg now feels sidelined by South African youth’s embrace of imported American sounds, mostly hip-hop. Refusing to follow that trend, he finds himself with an older, mostly white, audience, but it remains loyal.

What’s more, Clegg is a gifted storyteller and a passionate performer who’s evolved with age. Maybe he can’t kick out those high-stepping Zulu dances the way he did 20 and 30 years ago, but he says his new band "still delivers the goods."

Bembeya Jazz play Johnny D’s, 17 Holland Street in Davis Square, this Wednesday, July 7. Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited play Johnny D’s on Saturday July 10, and D’Gary performs there on Wednesday July 21; call (617) 776-2004. Johnny Clegg performs next Thursday, July 8, at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston; call (617) 876-4265.