Tune in to npr.org tonight at 7:30 PM ET to hear Orchestra Boabab, live in concert. After nearly 40 years of making music, Orchestra Baobab, says NPR, "remains one of the world's foremost purveyors of Afro-Cuban pop.

Orchestra Baobab are currently touring the States with songs from their latest release, Made in Dakar, stopping at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee this past weekend to perform a set that PopMatters calls "the gem of the festival." Tonight they're in Western Massachusetts to play Northampton's Pearl Street Nightclub and head further east at the end of the week for a set at the Somerville Theater, outside Boston, on Saturday. The Boston Globe's Andrew Gilbert says the band is "sounding more soulful than ever" on the new album.

Made in Dakar, Orchestra Boabab's first album of new recordings since 2002, was released last week. Billboard says the collection of new songs and new takes on classic Baobab tunes proves to be "a great retrospective" on the band with "no shortage of stylistic turns." The review calls it "a major thrill" to have the chance to rediscover some of the many hard-to-find classics, "retracked in grand fashion" for the new album.

Made in Dakar, Orchestra Baobab's first album of new recordings since 2002's Grammy-nominated Specialist in All Styles, hits stores in the United States today. Rolling Stone gives Made in Dakar four stars, with reviewer Will Hermes writing that "with this collection of burbling grooves, these Senegalese legends recapture the Afro-Cuban bliss of their 1982 classic, Pirates Choice---imagine the Buena Vista Social Club weaned on motherland polyrhythms." Hermes points to guitarist Barthélemy Attisso as the band's "secret weapon," calling him "a guitar giant with a touch as delicate and melodically sublime as Jerry Garcia's" and describing his performances on two particular tracks as "so chill they'll buckle your knees."

With Orchestra Baobab's new album, Made in Dakar, due out on Tuesday, the group's co-founder Barthélemy Attisso spoke with Time Out New York about the new album, the forthcoming tour, and the joys of bringing their music to the rest of the world. Time Out's K. Leander Williams writes that Attisso has "been singled out as one of the most distinctive guitarist-arrangers the African continent has produced." In 2002, that singular sound met with another iconic musical ambassador when Youssou N'Dour produced what Williams calls the group's "triumphant reunion album," Specialist in All Styles. N'Dour's guest vocals on the new album leads to the "gorgeous update" of the band's classic song "Nijaay" and proves another example of the band's effort to showcase as many of their musical interests as possible.

In an effort to expand the musical palate of Vampire Weekend fans newly taken to the sounds of Afro-pop, which the band references in its work, the Los Angeles Times offers some "relatively recent gems" from Africa's diverse musical offerings. Included is Amadou & Mariam's Manu Chao-produced album Dimanche à Bamako, which the Times' Ann Powers says "ranks as one of the sunniest musical outings released this century." She writes: "Some tracks boogie like classic rock, others roll along on those gloriously languorous Malian rhythms, some flirt with hip-hop. Every one will make you jump up and dance."