Melding sweet soul music with Afrobeat

At the start of the new second album by the Budos Band, simply titled "The Budos Band II," a double blast of horns ushers in a liquid groove that channels the spirit of Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, and a generation of Afro-funk innovators. It's to the point of osmosis, but this isn't Lagos circa 1972: It's New York City in 2007, at a time when Brooklyn hipster label Daptone has become curator and celebrant of an old-school soul revival. And the Budos, 11 mostly white dudes from Staten Island, have expanded that movement's scope into Afrobeat.

It's a credit to the musicianship of the band, which wraps up the Museum of Fine Arts's Concerts in the Courtyard series tonight, and the richness of the musical seam they mine that these 10 tracks sound as contemporary as they do. As with original Afrobeat, the music recapitulates decades of transatlantic influences and styles. Just as Kuti's sound reflected exposure to jazz and James Brown, the Budos's effort contains multitudes, with undercurrents of psychedelic soundtrack funk on "Budos Rising," Latin jazz on "Mas o Menos," island syncopation on "King Cobra," and many other flavors in the mix. One winner is "My Girl," a fresh and entirely surprising overhaul of the Temptations classic.

The instrumental setup (the Budos don't do vocals) gives the players room to roam; also to their credit, they use their freedom judiciously, packing short, crisp songs rather than succumbing to jam-band indulgence, always a risk in this kind of setting. A sense of focus and purpose animates the record end to end, from song selection to the tight arrangements and the doggedly analog production.

Not present here from the original Afrobeat era is a sense of the politics and social ferment that produced that music. Unlike Antibalas, the Afro-funk band of record on the New York scene, the Budos eschew messages; in a recent interview, members said what drew them to Afrobeat was its musicality, not its cultural context. Which may be fine, so long as the work it inspires is as brilliantly funky as this album has turned out to be. But it leaves unanswered some nagging questions about the new hipness of old soul and the inherent limitations on a retro revival's ability to shape forward progress.

The Budos Band performs at the Museum of Fine Arts (465 Huntington Ave.) tonight at 7:30. Tickets are $25, $20 for students, seniors, and MFA members. 617-369-3306. mfa.org/concerts