Even a granite statue would have succumbed to the irresistible temptation to get down from its plinth and dance to the infectious Congolese rumba of Dizzy Mandjeku and his band.

The Odemba OK Jazz All Stars were convened to celebrate the music of the late, great Zairian band leader known as Franco, who from the Fifties was in the forefront of a movement which fused Cuban rhythms to traditional local music.

The sound swept the continent off its feet and is at the heart, much African music even today.

At the Sallis Benney it swept Brighton off its feet. With a brass section, four fantastic vocalists (one of whom is a grandfather to 25 children) drums, bass and two guitarists, including Mandjeku himself in a splendid white-striped suit, they invited the sell-out audience to lose themselves in dance. Which they did.

The joint was already jumpin1 when the loose-limbed crowd at the front were hauled onto the stage to strut their stuff with the musicians.

But then the party really kicked off, with an MC shouting out instructions to all of us on how to throw shapes which, among other things, imitated swimming fish and involved lots of shaking of collective booty. It was gloriously abandoned and unashamedly sexy.

But underlying the beguiling directness of the music was a complexity which somehow managed to find the joy button in the human soul and keep it pressed.

And ultimately it was Mandjeku himself who, spinning heavenly African melodies with his guitar, was the grand architect of the epidemic of happiness which swept the hall.