Bay Area swing stars Steve Lucky & the Rhumba Bums featuring Miss Carmen Getit are tonight’s attraction at Ashkenaz’ exciting “Sweet & Low Down Wednesdays” Series that takes place all odd Wednesdays (1st, 3rd, 5th). The series brings in some of the West Coast’s favorite blues bands, as well as those that stretch into such related dance music as West Coast Swing, New Orleans R&B, East Coast Swing/Lindy Hop, and jump ’n’ jive jazz. As with many Ashkenaz offerings, each show will be preceded by a lesson that will help all comers dance the night away in style on the spacious floor at Ashkenaz – voted “Best Dance Club” in the East Bay Express Readers’ Poll once again in 2009.

In a four-star CD review, DownBeat magazine wrote: “The Rhumba Bums abide by Cab Calloway’s advice: ‘Live what’s in your soul and sing your friggin’ heart out.’” Steve Lucky & the Rhumba Bums have been one of the West Coast’s most popular, to say nothing of most entertaining and fun, bands since composer-pianist-leader Steve Lucky assembled the band back in 1994 in the early days of the swing dance revival. The Rhumba Bums continue to play and sing just about the most irresistible dance tunes extant, mixing some well-known ’40s and ’50s jump blues and swing charts with rare and nearly-forgotten gems that deserve to be resurrected. The Bums’ second CD, “Some Like It Hot!”, features several band originals such as “Beat Girl,” “Maybe Later,” “The Hollywood Jump,” and “Haul Off and Love Me,” plus a live version of “Every Time I Hear that Mellow Saxophone,” featured in the movie “Be Cool.”

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The two Haitian-born founders of Kalbass Kreyol share the stage with their current bands tonight in a Haitian-Caribbean concert Sophis calls “Up Close & Personal with Sophis & Kalbass Kreyol plus the infectious sound of AfriCombo.” Sophis continues to lead Kalbass Kreyol, while former partner Mr. G leads his AfriCombo.

Kalbass Kreyol is a high-energy band known for its electrifying and uplifting live performances. Its members embody the spirit of its music – eclectic and unique, with the essence of Haiti at its core. Since its start in 2005 the band has featured musicians from Haiti, China, the Congo, Puerto Rico, Iran, Trinidad, and the U.S. As a songwriter, Sophis crafts music designed to give listeners hope, inspiration, and awareness. At the center of his sound are elements of Haitian kompa and rara, which are mélanged with merengue, reggae, salsa, zouk, rock, and funk to create an unusual rhythmic cocktail that keeps audiences asking for more. The band has staged and/or participated in nine benefit concerts that raised $15,000 for Haitian earthquake relief. Sophis is still lending his voice and music to various local fundraising projects for Haiti in the Bay Area as a solo artist. Tonight he gets “up close and personal” with his audience by sharing material from his solo project as well as the expanded and contagious repertoire of Kalbass Kreyol. www.myspace.com/kalbasskreyol

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As if a full day of music up and down Telegraph Avenue during the 7th Annual Berkeley World Music Festival (www.berkeleyworldmusic.org) weren’t enough, the festival and Ashkenaz are throwing this “Africa meets Mississippi” afterparty and celebration featuring Markus James & the Wassonrai, with special guests including Tim Abdellah Fuson on Moroccan Gnawa Gimbri.

Guitarist and singer James is a pioneer in reconnecting roots blues with its deep African origins. He has traveled to West Africa to record and perform original, blues-based music with traditional Malian musicians since 1994, when he first made his way to the village of Niafounke, home of the legendary Sonrai musician Ali Farka Toure. Internationally acclaimed, James has been honored to have tracks included on two compilations of Desert Blues, “Sahara – Blues of the Desert” and “Desert Blues III,” alongside such great artists as Ali Farka Toure, Baaba Maal, Youssou N’Dour, and Tinariwen. He has performed at the legendary Festival In The Desert three times, and his award-winning 2005 documentary film “Timbuktoubab, ”chronicling his long-term collaborations in Timbuktu with three Malian master musicians, has been seen on many PBS stations nationally.

There’s a whole world of conscious, independent hip-hop artists in the Bay Area who rarely get to share a stage like Ashkenaz’ at tonight’s groundbreaking showcase, “We All We Got.” The night is presented by San Francisco management and production firm Inhouse Talent. The company’s Gina Gallo, who also co-produces the annual Power to the Peaceful Festival and has long worked with such political hip-hop artists as Michael Franti & Spearhead and Radio Active, has staged more than three dozen such events around the Bay Area along with revolutionary poet and event host Sellassie.

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Berkeley’s deep groove band 7th Street Sound propels a night of conscious reggae dance music that is both a talent showcase and a double birthday celebration for Danny I (birthday tonight) and Luv Fyah (birthday this weekend). Adding to the excitement are performances by Binghi Ghost, Irae Divine, Dyimah, and DJs Silverback, Rebel Dub, and Lionheart Sounds.

St. Croix singer Danny I celebrates his birthday with his latest songs including “Seek Zion” and “Redda Fyah.” In the 1990s he began his fast-rising musical career in a vocal trio with Army and Jahold, then carved out a solo career with mystical songs marked by both depth and simplicity. His album, “Unchangeable,” was issued on the Virgin Islands reggae label I Grade. www.myspace.com/rasdannyi

Singjay Luv Fyah features selections from his recent collaboration with Million 7, “Ethiopia We Belong.” A Reggae-Vibes.com reviewer wrote that “his presence and delivery lives up to his name, bringing plenty of Fire and Love on this release, where he combines sweet, soulful singing with chanting on songs like ‘New Star Born,’ ‘Ethiopia I Belong,’ ‘So Many Lights,’ ‘Coming from the West’ or ‘Time Traveler.’” www.myspace.com/luvfyah

From St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, singer Binghi Ghost takes his name from the Rastafarian word for “Nyabinghi,” meaning the real, original chanting Rastafarians use to give thanks and praises through singing. Add in the choices humanity is currently facing, translate them into reggae, and that is Binghi Ghost’s music, an uplifting sound conveying that “we can accomplish what we set our minds to do.” www.myspace.com/binghighost

Originally from Philadelphia, Irae Divine, the Empress of Zion, sings both conscious and love songs buoyed by her lilting high voice and deep bass grooves. www.myspace.com/iraedivine7thstband

Oakland singer Dyimah is both a mother and college student, yet has energy to spare when she hits the stage with her original songs including “Jah Lion” and “Never Give Up.” www.myspace.com/dyimahr

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Violinist-fiddler-composer and singer Tom “Rigo” Rigney’s East Bay quintet Flambeau plays traditional Cajun and zydeco two-steps and waltzes, along with low-down blues and New Orleans R&B. What sets the band apart is Rigney’s fresh musical takes on Cajun and zydeco, and other styles he loves to play from rock to classical, creating a celebration of life through dance rhythms. The tight ensemble of virtuoso musicians – which also includes guitarist Danny Caron (Rigney’s longtime collaborator since their Sundogs years), keyboardist Caroline Dahl, bassist Steve Parks, and drummer Brent Rampone – plays mostly original material, highlighting Rigney’s arrangements.

Christian reggae and soca singer Jeff Johnson returns to Ashkenaz with original songs from 2008’s “Ain’t No Giving Up” CD and new material from his in-progress next recording. The evening also features Hebrew reggae musician Judah Ritterman and others backed by Johnson’s band. Johnson’s heartfelt message in combining gospel and reggae is that “Love is the key to success, joy, peace and happiness,” and his uplifting music reflects that spirit.

Quinn DeVeaux & the Blue Beat Review are tonight’s attraction at Ashkenaz’ exciting “Sweet & Low Down Wednesdays” Series that takes place all odd Wednesdays (1st, 3rd, 5th). The series brings in some of the West Coast’s favorite blues bands, as well as those that stretch into such related dance music as West Coast Swing, New Orleans R&B, East Coast Swing/Lindy Hop, and jump ’n’ jive jazz. As with many Ashkenaz offerings, each show will be preceded by a lesson that will help all comers dance the night away in style on the spacious floor at Ashkenaz – voted “Best Dance Club” in the East Bay Express Readers’ Poll once again in 2009.

Fete de la Musique! Two bands! All in French! This special night of French dance music and culture is inspired by France’s annual June 21 celebration, Fete de la Musique. A French meal will be available in the café tonight only. Like the French, the bands play music to make sure everyone parties and dances.

Influenced by life’s eccentricities, Sonoma County band Dgiin plays gypsy funk with a French twist. Guitarist-vocalist Gabe Pirard was raised in France, where he began learning the classical guitar at age 9. He moved to California in 1998; when his sister, vocalist Mimi Pirard-Aquino, joined him from France a year later, they started Dgiin. While the Flamenco-Django-esque band’s personnel has changed somewhat over the years, they have consistently put on memorable, high-energy shows, captivating crowds with their singular sound. They have a busy performance schedule that has recently been expanding beyond the North Bay. Dgiin’s current lineup features Gabe and Mimi on vocals and guitars, bassist Chris Le Dieph, Quebecois violinist Magali Sanscartier, drummer James Foster (of Free Peoples), and percussionist Ricky Pirard-Aquino, a native of El Salvador, who has played in numerous salsa, rock, and Latin Jazz bands. www.myspace.com/dgiin

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The Bay Area’s leader in the World Beat and Afrobeat scene, Kotoja was created by Nigerian singer-bassist Babá Ken Okulolo and features bandmembers from West Africa and America playing a bubbling brew of African highlife, juju, jazz, and world dance rhythms with driving guitars, riffing horns, and persuasive percussion. New York clothier Dan Storper was so moved by a Kotoja concert in Golden Gate Park 15 years back that he started the popular Putumayo record company, whose many releases (including the most recent Kotoja CD, “Super Sawale”) offer positive, uplifting music from around the world in the spirit of Kotoja. “We see the world as one family,” Okulolo says of Kotoja’s style. “Our music expresses this message.”

Two of the best-known players in klezmer music, Stu Brotman and Jim Rebhan, return to Ashkenaz with the world premiere performance of their new duo, The Essentials, dedicated to playing classic klezmer dance music. Rebhan is the accordionist in California Klezmer and Ellis Island, among other groups. Brotman is known for his virtuoso playing in Brave Old World and Veretski Pass, on bass, bassetl (three stringed bass), basy (three stringed Polish folk cello), and baraban (Jewish-style drum). He was also a founding member of both blues band Canned Heat and the eclectic Kaleidoscope (with David Lindley), and has done everything from producing early recordings by the Klezmorim to performing with Itzhak Perlman.

Rebhan explains the birth of the duo: “The Essentials is brand new, and was Stu’s idea. But we’ve played together many times in other contexts for close to two decades, although we have never been technically permanent members of the same band. Stu felt that as a duo we could provide ‘the essentials’ in a small package, especially playing for dancing.”

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One of the hardest-hitting and most honored bluesmen to call the Bay Area home, Tommy Castro brings his band and makes his Ashkenaz debut in the first annual fundraiser for Through the Looking Glass (TLG). Started in Berkeley in 1982, TLG is a disability community-based nonprofit organization and a pioneer in its field.

Likewise, guitarist and singer Tommy Castro has pioneered some of the most aggressive electric blues of the past generation. Just after returning home from a two-month European tour in May, Castro attended the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, where he hoped to win band of the year “because,” he said, “my band works so hard and brings their best to the stage every night.” Not only did he get the band award, but he also brought home three more prestigious BMAs, for Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album (for his latest release, “Hard Believer”), and the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award. Castro’s band is saxophonist Keith Crossman, trumpeter Tom Poole, drummer Ronnie Smith, bassist Scot Sutherland, and guitarist Steve Spirn.

Although he’s always labeled a “blues” musician, San Rafael’s Castro brings heavy slabs of rock and R&B into his original songs and performance. After honing his chops in a variety of bands, he joined San Francisco’s Dynatones in the late 1980s before starting his own Tommy Castro Band in the ’90s. They served as house band on NBC’s “Comedy Showcase” for three years. In 2001-02 B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer tours, each night climaxing with a duet between King and Castro.

Through the Looking Glass is a nationally recognized center that has pioneered research, training, and services for families in which a child, parent, or grandparent has a disability or medical issue. TLG is one of seven disability organizations that partnered to build the Ed Roberts Campus, a universally designed, transit-oriented center located at the Ashby BART Station in Berkeley. www.lookingglass.org

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Prezident Brown is the reigning Jamaican reggae M.C., a champion of the new roots and reality consciousness, with a message that is pure Rasta conscious vibes. He is an artist driven by a sense of mission and purpose that, he likes to say, “edutains” (heightens the consciousness of a people) as much as entertains. Tonight he brings his best-known songs and exciting music from his just-released CD, “Generation Next,” where he combines roots Nyabinghi chants with such anthems as “Unleash the Lion” and “Harder than Rock.”

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Ashkenaz presents the East Bay premiere of Symphony of Koras, featuring an “orchestra” of musicians playing the kora, the 21-stringed West African harp. It is the only known kora orchestra in the United States, and its only previous concert was at small Mill Valley theater last year. The orchestra – seven international kora players who live in the Bay Area – includes Senegalese singer-dancer Ousseynou Kouyate in a two-part show, the first half a concert for listening, followed by the orchestra playing music for dancing.

The kora is traditionally a solo instrument played by a griot, and even in Africa groups of kora players are usually assembled only for large family or state events. Although several of the Symphony of Koras players have performed at Ashkenaz in various African and world groupings, they’ve never played in an all-kora ensemble.

Anthropologist, kora player, and director of the Symphony of Koras Suzanne Chevalier explains: “I had a djembe (drum) player from Africa here some years ago, and I wanted another instrument for accompaniment. I invited Daniel Berkman to play kora. When I returned to Gambia (Chevalier studies elephants there, and has also devoted time to collecting African sacred music), I began taking kora lessons.” Three years ago at a local concert, Senegal native Solo Cissokho asked Chevalier to assemble an orchestra of the instruments for his next Bay Area visit. That led to the Mill Valley concert, where the audience gave an enthused standing ovation. And now, the Symphony of Koras plays at Ashkenaz.

The kora has a thousand-year history, beginning in the kingdom of Mali as the accompanying instrument for griots, musicians who preserve and sing the histories of their people. It is a classical instrument with a classical repertoire. There are 150 pieces that all kora players learn, and selections from that repertoire are what Symphony of Koras play together.

Ousseynou Kouyate was a member of the National Ballet of Senegal for seven years before moving to Berkeley with his twin brother Assane and starting their colorful music/dance band Djialy Kunda Kouyate (now known as Sekhou Senegal), using such indigenous instruments as the kora and balafon. Kouyate is a descendant of griots who carries on age-old traditions. He has performed in various world music collaborations at Ashkenaz with such musicians as fellow African star Solo Cissokho and Cajun-zydeco fiddler Tom Rigney. Last year he was featured in the African world dance band Makuru. www.sekhousenegal.com

Born in Gambia, raised in Mali, singer and kora master Karamo Susso grew up in a compound of griots, next door to Toumani Diabate. His uncle was Ballake Cissoko. Susso was playing kora and performing before he was big enough to hold the instrument. He has since gone on to perform with many of Africa’s top stars. www.myspace.com/karamosusso

On her own, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and acupuncturist Unity Nguyen blends ancient Vietnamese and African folk traditions, interweaving them with jazz, funk, and other global influences. She specializes in the kora and the Vietnamese dan tranh (16-string zither). www.unityhealinghands.com

This regular event at Ashkenaz presents flamenco “in an intimate, cabaret setting, as it should be seen,” with a costume exhibit and sale of flamenco items. Tonight’s featured performers are acclaimed dancer and choreographer Yaelisa with her troupe Las Flamenquitas, master guitarist Jason McGuire “El Rubio,” singer Roberto Zamora, and dancer Marina Elana.

A Bay Area treasure, Yaelisa has captured the attention of critics around the world. The Los Angeles Times called her a “luminary” among flamenco dancers for her extraordinary rhythmic ability, which radiates pure emotion infused with sensuality. Raised by her Spanish mother, also a flamenco performer, Yaelisa was surrounded from birth by the rhythms, gestures, and vocal laments of the art in its purest form. Her artistic training has come from some of the great Spanish masters, including Ciro, Manolo Marin, Jose Galvan, and El Guito. Her mission is to present flamenco dance with a contemporary approach that echoes the “nuevo flamenco” movement happening in Spain today.

This may be the Midnite Ramblers’ Ashkenaz debut, but the trio has been together for over two years, and its members have long played in the local music community. All three are steeped in authentic Cajun traditions, having studied with the masters before launching their own careers. They deliver irresistibly danceable Cajun classics.

Singer and fiddler Agi Ban is a founder of the Aux Cajunals as well as the Midnite Ramblers. Accordionist and fiddler Mark Marcin is a former teacher at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, where his love of Cajun, Creole, and zydeco music led to learning accordion from Ray Abshire, Jimmy Breaux, and others. He studied fiddle with Suzy Thompson and Cedric Watson. Singer-guitarist Julay Brooks has long played music in local roots bands, especially country and bluegrass (Honky Tonk Dreamers), but seeing the Pine Leaf Boys at Ashkenaz led her naturally into Cajun music (she now plays with Creole Belles), and in 2007 Ban recruited her and Marcin to form the Midnite Ramblers.

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Bay Area blues stars Mark Hummel & the Blues Survivors team up with guitar icon Rusty Zinn tonight in Ashkenaz’ exciting “Sweet & Low Down Wednesdays” Series that takes place all odd Wednesdays (1st, 3rd, 5th). The series brings in some of the West Coast’s favorite blues bands, as well as those that stretch into such related dance music as West Coast Swing, New Orleans R&B, East Coast Swing/Lindy Hop, and jump ’n’ jive jazz. As with many Ashkenaz offerings, each show is preceded by a lesson that will help all comers dance the night away in style on the spacious floor at Ashkenaz – voted “Best Dance Club” in the East Bay Express Readers’ Poll once again in 2009.

As Huey Lewis (no slouch at harmonica himself) says, “Mark Hummel is simply one of the best harmonica players working today.” In recent years Hummel has become nationally known for his annual Blues Harmonica Blowouts (now in its 20th year). Meanwhile, ace guitarist Rusty Zinn has been touring with some of reggae’s biggest acts. But for much of their lives, the two have made hard-hitting blues together. Tonight’s show isn’t so much a reunion as a continuation; it is, however, their first time together on the Ashkenaz stage in many years. Hummel is also on tour celebrating the release of his new CD, “Retro-Active,” and will feature some of its tunes in his show. Along with Hummel and Zinn, the Blues Survivors are bassist RW Grigsby and drummer Marty Dodson.

Rusty Zinn really kicked off his career in Hummel’s band in the early 1990s, was discovered by Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and has gone on to work with many of the heavyweights of blues and reggae. His own recordings have featured such guests as Elvin Bishop and the Soul Syndicate. Zinn is best known as one of the greats of guitar in blues and reggae, but he’s also become a fine singer, with soul to spare. www.myspace.com/rustyzinn