There was some question as to whether the Tuesday night performance at Johnny Brenda's by The Very Best, the winning African electro-pop collaboration between Malawi-born singer Esau Mwamwaya and Euro DJ duo Radioclit, was ever going to take place.

Delays in getting a visa for Mwamwaya caused the band to cancel several shows on its tour behind the superb new album, Warm Heart of Africa. It was only last week that the London-based Mwamwaya succeeded in getting cleared to travel to the United States.

On Tuesday, the show did indeed go on - though of the two-man remix crew that is Radioclit, only Johan Karlberg was in the house. His partner, Etienne Tron, was missing in action. For that matter, so was the agit-pop rapper M.I.A., whose guest appearance on Warm Heart of Africa's song "Rain Dance" is just one example of the album's savvy pastiche of indigenous African beats and disco-ball club music moves.

Still, nobody expected M.I.A., nor Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, who sings the album's ebullient title track (named after a Malawian tourist slogan), to be there. What fans of the blog-buzz band might have expected, however, was a performance that lasted for more than 35 minutes.

Make no mistake, there was an irresistible energy coming from the stage. The deep-voiced and long-limbed Mwamwaya was in perpetual motion, wearing a snap-brim hat and with string dangling from the letters TVB on his black T-shirt. He was flanked by two dancers in gold spandex, with rolling hips and idiosyncratic choreographed moves, which included getting down on the stage on all fours and striking poses in a three-point sprinter's position.

But with one mix tape and a full-length album on their resume, it would have been nice if TVB had taken the time to work up more of their material into a headlining-length stage act. Though nearly all of the music was canned - vocal chorales included - the performance, and Mwamwaya's live singing, had enough vigor to carry the day.

That was true of everything from a tune in which Mwamwaya sang over a sample from M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" to the performance of "Warm Heart of Africa," in which his voice intertwined with Koenig's, and Karlberg sped up the tempo to create a manic remix on the spot. It was fun while it lasted - but it didn't last very long.