This is the fourth year of African Soul Rebels, a portmanteau tour that takes three African artists round the UK’s more enlightened provincial venues, including last Friday the Anvil in Basingstoke. The starriest line-up yet pitted Tony Allen, the father of Nigerian Afrobeat, against the Malian legend Salif Keita and the Senegalese rapper Didier Awadi.

Awadi was a disappointment; after a singalong stripped-down version of Bob Marley’s “War”, he and his band shifted into a confrontational Public Enemy-style thrash. “Stoppez-les,” he shouted. “Bush is a criminal!” – to general assent; “Sarkozy is a criminal! A racist” – to general indifference; “Blair is a criminal!” – to, on balance, polite disagreement.

Keita entered without announcement or ceremony, knelt for a moment, then sat to play slow, bluesy acoustic guitar. Half an hour later he left in the same way. In between, he delivered an astonishing set. He and the other musicians who later joined him sat in a semi-circle in the manner of an Irish pub session held out of doors late on a hot night. Guitar, kora and ngoni wove into hypnotic staccato grooves, punctuated by Keita’s imperious, declamatory phrases. His two French guitarists strummed, slid and, for a while, breathed quiet harmonica to add a Country and West African undertow. The young Keita was shunned by his aristocratic family for becoming a musician: this performance was regal in the best sense, and far too short.

Allen has complained that the two-hour sets he now plays are a poor substitute for the six-hour marathons he powered as Fela Kuti’s drummer. This made his 45 minutes at the Anvil hardly even a warm-up, and he had brought a reduced, though energetic band. Everything was rhythm: melodic elements, such as trumpet riffing and one-note electric piano punctuation, became rhythmic through sheer repetition.

Allen was enthroned at his drumkit. As he was dressed entirely in black against a black backdrop, his sticks shone out, flashing and hammering in infinitely complex rhythms, rolling from side to side of the kit. Most of the songs made one wish for a touch of Fela’s scabrous pidgin invective, though when the band chanted “Don’t take my kindness for weakness” over and over again, it carried a sulphurous hint of his former employer’s dark menace.

The African Soul Rebels tour concludes tonight at the Sage, Gateshead