"Spirit of Africa" should be a lively Christmas antidote to carols. Considering that many African countries are at least nominally Muslim, I wondered if there would be much of a nod to the holiday in the show at all. Papis Nyass, a Gambian percussionist working on the project, says he cannot speak for the whole continent, but, in his native Gambia, they "celebrate Christmas like the English celebrate Christmas.

"We were colonized by the British," Nyass explains. "We changed it, though, in the sense that a lot of Muslims celebrate Christmas, as maybe in the neighborhood your uncle is Christian and your family is Muslim. But we all celebrate it in an African way with eating good food, dancing, drum groups and making historical boats."

The boats Nyass refers to are parade floats of various designs made with bamboo frames. One of the more popular themes he says is a float made to commemorate the queen of England. When it's pointed out that this doesn't exactly sound like an English Christmas, he chuckles and adds, "It goes on for two weeks — two full weeks of noise!"

Tshikuna's goal is to partially revive the community dance spirit of the traditional Tshikuna using music from the Congo. "Congo music is 'African' music nowadays," Nyass says. "Of course, Africa is big, and you can hear different music from Central Africa and West Africa. But music from the Congo in the past few years has been dominating popular African dance music." He says the reason is relatively recent Kinshasa updates to dance music that Nyass describes as including "both the beats of 'house' and the Afro-Latin beat."

This current central role of the Congo in African popular music is only natural as Nyass reminds us "the Congo has always been important to the origins of genres like soukous, cha-cha, samba and rumba." Tshikuna's sound also contains elements of what Nyass says is called "High Life" music in West Africa. "In Central Africa, they call it bolingo music," he says. " 'Bolingo' means love in the Lingala language, so when you hear the lyrics of bolingo they are about love mostly."

Many of the musicians in Tshikuna and other groups performing in the "Spirit of Africa" are Czech nationals who don't have a direct African heritage, yet reflect a growing regional interest in African music. Nyass says this phenomenon has "developed a lot in 10 years." "There are so many young, talented Czechs who are interested in African culture," Nyass marvels. Many of these Czech African music enthusiasts and artists are now traveling to Africa to study African drumming and dancing.