Richard Bona is a world-class bandleader, bass guitarist, singer and songwriter. He's also tall, good looking, charming, intelligent and hard working. What can you say? His quintet starts with Liberty City by Jaco Pastorius (Bona's teenage hero), its swaggering big band ensemble blasted out by Aaron Heick (saxophones) and Etienne Stadwijk (keyboards), and they drop in Joe Zawinul's Birdland and Cannonball for good measure.

Yet this is no conventionally expert jazz outfit, more a world-jazz supergroup. French drummer Stephane Vera and Colombian percussionist Samuel Torres have every good groove at their disposal, and the band's (lightly worn) virtuosity is channelled by Bona's charismatic leadership.

Bona's lyrics are in Douala, a Cameroonian dialect, but he sings with such expression you get the meaning. After three albums or so, he has a solid repertoire of songs, many sounding more robust live - Bisso Baba, Ekwa Mwato, Kalabancoro - while a funked up version of Djombwe segues joyously into Stevie Wonder's I Wish.

A magazine once described Bona's music as a "slick jazz-world fusion". I can accept "slick" if it means "adroitly executed", but to suggest that Bona's music is "superficial" or "glib" is to miss the point. Music goes right to the core of his being, from the tiny, almost inaudible sounds he coaxes from his throat, to the thundering ensemble choruses. Bona's music goes beyond "well rehearsed", "superbly played" and "beautifully sung" to an intense and essentially Afro-centric music for the new century.