He swooped upward with his voice growing rawer as it rose; he traded percussive syllables with his drummer; he bounced syncopated syllables against the beat.
And he does it flexibly, soloing through it, over steady melodic patterns by the guitarist Miles Okazaki, intoning percussive syllables to start each of the album's 36 tracks.
He traded quick percussive syllables with drummers and long, curlicued lines with his keyboardist and backup singer; he matched his dancers twirl for twirl.
Ms. Aydar has a supple voice that can glide through a phrase with flirtatious insouciance or make percussive syllables ping across the beat.
It also works in a harmonica solo sampled from the bluesman Sonny Terry, who died in 1986; a looping flute by way of Chris Bear from Grizzly Bear; and backing vocals that can be gospel harmony or Ping-Ponging percussive syllables.
Always cosmopolitan, Ms. Makeba knew her Billie Holiday as well as old Xhosa melodies like "The Click Song," with its percussive syllables, which became one of her international hits.
She mimed sniffing cocaine in "All the Way Down" as the song warned of its temptations; meanwhile, she was batting around percussive syllables over her band's ominous 1970's funk.
They also need prodigious memories to hold complex compositions and the system of rhythmic cycles that underlies classical improvisation, quick tongues to vocalize the percussive syllables they play and an ear for the remarkable tones and timbres they draw from instruments as basic as a hand drum or a clay jar.
Mr. Gurtu shifted among tabla drumming, with its dizzying, microscopically divided beats, to assembling funk patterns with a drum machine, to exploring the sounds of a gong dipped in water; he sang rapid-fire percussive syllables to answer and overlap simpler melodies.
Percussive nonsense syllables -- the tra-la-las that give the songs their name -- percolate through the group or burst out like centuries-old scat singing.
