Groovin' multiculturally

Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center. A place for chamber music, right? Small jazz gigs?

Well, starting on Thursday night, and on three of the next four Thursday nights after that, Perelman will transform into a world-music dance hall, with dance floor, bar, and music to shake your multicultural assumptions to. Slavic soul. Sufi folk/funk. New York Latin fusion. Congolese rumba and soukous.

It's called Global Grooves, and the Kimmel folks have been putting on the summer series since 2004.

Tom Warner, vice president of programming at Kimmel, says that "it's a very cool thing to turn the Perelman into a club." Out of "great love for this fabulous dance music from all over the world," Warner looks for "music that crosses borders easily, really good music that gets you moving, no matter where it comes from." All the groups combine many dance genres, in their own ways.

That eclectic mix is well in evidence with the group beginning the series Thursday night at 7:30: Samba Mapangala and Virunga. Mapangala, born in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, lived in Uganda and Kenya before setting up in the United States. He and Virunga (named after a volcano in Congo) weave a bright braid of African music. Their 1981 hit, "Malako" or "Last Wish," swept Africa with its fiendishly danceable layering of voice, bass, and melody; it's still heard at dances all over the continent.

Reached at his home in Maryland, Mapangala says: "My kind of music is African dance music with a little style of salsa, music from Congo, African rumba, soukous, a danceable music. . . . I lived in Kenya for 20 years, so if some of my songs have an Arab influence, that may be why."

But salsa? Mapangala laughs. "I remember when I was young in Congo, we used to listen to a lot of salsa. All our musicians used to play it. In Africa, we love any kind of music. R&B, rock and roll, if it's good, we love it."

OK, we have to ask Warner: How do they move all the Perelman's permanent seats out of the way? "The seating area on the main floor," he says, "is on one huge lift, an elevator, and it all goes down into a basement, where the seats are moved off as on railroad tracks. Once the seats are off-loaded, the floor comes back up. It can be done in a relatively short period of time, transforming the space with a flick of a switch."

CuCu Diamantes, who plays July 16, embodies the eclectic and multicultural, not only in her infectious music, but also in herself: Born in Cuba, she traces her ancestry to France, Spain, Africa, and China. Her music is a salad of salsa, Bhangra, hip-hop, funk, tango, disco, flamenco, other -cos. She was a cofounder of the Grammy-nominated, New York-based band Yerba Buena, itself a music mixer.

Diamantes says her fans are remarkably open to her global approach. "Even if I sing in Spanish and people don't understand," she says, "they will identify with the music. A lot of people tell me they get hooked by the flavor of many kinds of music. The whole planet is becoming like that. I get e-mail from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, 'We really like your music.' The fans really surprise me."

Philadelphia, she says, is full of "a very multicultural feeling. I love the African American thing there. It's full of people with different backgrounds, or if they're not born with that mix, they're looking to get culturally educated from different roots. I love that, when people explore different cultures." As she sings in her tune "Vengo," from her new album CuCuland, "Music heals the soul."

Programming Global Grooves, Warner says, has taught him that "Philly has become so diverse, pockets of ethnic neighborhoods, and all these bands have a following somewhere in the city. Word spreads, they hear about the show, and on the day of it, they show up and know they're going to have a good time."

No passport needed for Global Grooves - just an open heart and a readiness to dance.

Global Grooves World Music Dance Parties start at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St. Tickets: $20. Phone: 215-893-1999, www.kimmelcenter.org/ global.

Thursday: Samba Mapangala and Virunga.

July 16: CuCu Diamantes.

July 30: Kailash Kher's Kailasa (Sufi folk/funk).

Aug. 6: Slavic Soul Party (Balkan brass, American funk/jazz). EndText