Musicians from across Africa are taking part in a ten-day festival in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, to celebrate the continent's contribution to the World Music scene.

Many African musicians have become international recording stars, including Salif Keita from Mali and Youssou N'Dour from Senegal, while others have languished in obscurity, hoping for Western record labels to discover them and make their fortune.

It is the sheer breadth of available alternatives that makes it impossible to talk in simple terms about "African music".

Mlimani Park Orchestra: 'Tucheze Sikinde'

Most of it never even makes it onto record, and even when it does, there's a bewildering choice, from gently swinging traditional rhythms like Tanzania's Mlimani Park Orchestra to the more modern crossover material, hot from the studios of Abidjan and Paris.

"Jumbo" Vanrenen, who has been involved in the World Music scene for many years, says it is difficult to pinpoint a common ingredient that has made African music so popular.

Jumbo Vanrenen finds it "quite galling, that thing of African music"

"There is a broad common denominator in the sense of call-and-response, but that's about it.

"The traditions and cultural backgrounds are completely different. So I always find it quite galling, that thing of 'African music', " he says.

Instrumental fusion

After the pioneering work in the Fifties and Sixties by South African artistes like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela - who, above all, wanted to do their bit to help topple the apartheid system - the continent was seized by the tangled but driving guitar-rhythms of Zaire.

Papa Wemba: 'Yolele'

One of the greatest stars, still recording regularly, is Papa Wemba.

After Zaire, the spotlight turned onto Mali. There, most traditional music is in the keeping of the Mandingo caste of poets, or "griots", who have ritual responsibilities at weddings and circumcision.

Malian music often features two of the most beautiful and evocative instruments on the continent - the kora, a 21-string, harp-like instrument, and the ngoni, a four-string lute.

Guitar music by Mobido Kouyate

But session guitarists like Modibo Kouyate can simulate them on the guitar.

"The modern acoustic guitar can produce the sound of the ngoni and the kora, because here in Mali, there are three instruments that people are interested in: the kora, the ngoni and the balafon, which is a kind of xylophone.

The undisputed champion of Malian music, and, arguably, of all African music, is Salif Keita.

Salif Keita: 'Sina'

His 1987 western debut, 'Soro', turned conventional wisdom about Malian music on its head.

Since 'Soro', Salif Keita has branched out, working with various producers and musicians from outside Africa.

Musical roots

But Jumbo Vanrenen denies that that means he is selling out his African heritage.

"I have to go back and use a parallel used by Salif himself, which is that he might put on another set of clothes - a suit made by a French designer or something - it doesn't make him any less African.

"I don't see it as losing your African identity. I think if you ditch your language, ditch your culture and completely go and do a rock-and-roll thing, that's losing your identity," Jumbo Vanrenen says.

Another established World Music star is Youssou N'Dour, from Senegal.

He's currently struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of the western market and his own devotion to the "mbalax" style and the talking drum.

"Yes, mbalax is the source of Wolof tradition roots music. But mbalax is also an incarnation of modern African life.

"For young guys like me who've been to Dakar we can find traditional and modern influences. So it's really become a movement," N'Dour says.

Dearth of resources

Across most of Africa, studio facilities are scarce and instruments often prohibitively expensive.

The sounds of the Shirati Jazz band

Until those basic problems change, bands like Kenya's Shirati Jazz will remain a minority taste, hardly troubling the World Music charts.

But Jumbo Vanrenen predicts there could be a few new treats in store.

"Right now I've got an interest in "quaito" music from South Africa, which is a kind of house/techno, a very American direction which is coming out of the new liberated South Africa. They want to throw all of those tribal roots away", he says.