On Bastille Day, a world music beat

When the masses assemble to celebrate the storming of the Bastille tonight, it won't be heads that are rolling. Rather, the revolution will be marked by dancing feet, swaying hips, and shaking shoulders called to action by an international array of grooves spanning the Francophone universe.

Presented by the French Library Alliance Française with acts programmed by World Music, the 32 d annual Bastille Day Street Dance offers a decidedly contemporary perspective on the Francophone landscape, a world shaped by the empire forged in the 18th and 19th centuries by France (and to a much lesser extent Belgium).

The Marlborough Street event features Congolese-born, Los Angeles-based son/soukous star Ricardo Lemvo with his band Makina Loca , and Senegalese percussionist Lamine Touré's Boston-based Group Saloum (replacing Ousmane Toure ). In a reprise of 2005's rousing Bastille Day set, the charismatic Haitian singer-songwriter Emeline Michel , who splits her time between New York City, Montreal, and Providence , rounds out the triple bill.

"It's a program that showcases the very concept of Bastille Day, of liberty, equality, and brotherhood," says Noemie Craven, special events manager for the French Library. "People might be intimidated by the French language, but music is universal."

No artist better represents the universal reach of music than Lemvo, the powerful vocalist who seamlessly weaves together a panoply of Old and New World grooves. It's a sound that has made Lemvo's 10-piece band Makina Loca the hottest Latin dance outfit in Los Angeles (the name is a wonderful multilingual pun that means "crazy machine" in Spanish and roughly "dancing in a trance" in Kikongo). Drawing on Caribbean rhythms and Central African beats, Lemvo has honed an ever-expanding rhythmic palette encompassing Dominican merengue, Puerto Rican bomba, Congolese soukous, and Cuban son.

"I am always in search of new ideas, new avenues," Lemvo says. "Although I will stay true to my basic sound, I like to evolve. I like to grow."

For Lemvo, the mix seems perfectly natural, reflecting the sounds he heard while growing up in Kinshasa, the capital of the huge nation of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). When he moved to Los Angeles in 1972 to live with his father, Lemvo began collecting records by Cuban stars Arsenio Rodriquez and Beny Moré (whom he continues to revere). Studying political science in college he gradually became disenchanted with the prospect of an international law career and returned to his first love, singing everything from Afrobeat to Mexican rancheras as a backup vocalist.

In 1990, he created Makina Loca in his own polyglot image, with a repertoire of tunes in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Lacumi, and Lingala. After his 1996 debut "Tata Masamba" cemented his underground reputation as the hottest addition to the Southland's Latin music scene, he signed with Putumayo and made the electrifying albums "Mambo Yo Yo" and "Sao Salvador." With guest appearances by Cape Verdean vocalist Maria De Barros , and Congolese guitarists Papa Noel, Bopol, and Huit Kilos , Lemvo's latest release "Isabela" (Mopiato) is as wide ranging and dance-inducing as the others.

While the band plays a regular circuit of theaters and performance centers, Lemvo has never strayed from his dance band roots, and he thrives in settings like the Street Dance. "We do gigs where people sit down," Lemvo says. "But we feed on the audience, and it helps a lot when the venue is packed and there's electricity in the air. It makes us play better. Those are the type of venues I prefer, festivals and nightclubs where people are not afraid to let loose."

The dancing won't let up when Michel takes the stage. While rooted in Haitian styles such as rara, compas , and twoubadou, her music also incorporates samba, jazz, reggae, and lately a vivifying jolt of Cuban rhythms.

Michel became a leading force in contemporary Haitian music with the release of her 1987 debut album , "Douvanjou Ka Leve" (May the Sun Rise), which made her a star in the French-speaking Caribbean. Along with artists such as guitarist/vocalist Beethova Obas and the band Boukman Eksperyans , Michel brought Haitian music to the international scene with her dance hit "A-K-I-K-O," a song calling for Haitians to reject political turmoil by returning to an (apocryphal) innocent age. She spent the next decade in Paris and Montreal, extending her domain as the queen of Haitian music.

Singing in French and Haitian Creole, Michel has doggedly followed her own path, walking away from a lucrative record deal with Sony when she felt the label was trying to turn her into a deracinated pop singer. In producing her own albums for her Cheval de Feu label, she has taken control of her career, expanding her sound while maintaining her creative integrity.

Touré's musical journey has followed similar contours. Hailing from a venerable line of Wolof griots, he moved to Dakar in the mid - 1980s and immersed himself in mbalax, Senegal's celebratory percussion-driven pop style pioneered by Youssou N'Dour . Touré gained attention in 1995 when he joined the top mbalax band of Mapenda Seck (best known for his work with Orchestra Baobab ), and then toured internationally with Alioune Mbaye Nder .

Since settling in the Boston area, Touré has served as artist-in-residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as the leader of Group Saloum, which he founded in 2004. Expanding the mbalax sound with grooves drawn from reggae, Afrobeat, jazz, and funk, he's forged an infectious sound that's unmistakably West African but open to a world of influences.