Cuban pianist/composer Omar Sosa spent many years expanding his musical purview, steadily adding new sounds and collaborators. His performances were celebrations to which everyone was welcome, and he deftly wove together Moroccan chants and hip hop exhortations with Yoruba incantations and jazz improvisation.
You can still hear many of those influences in Sosa’s music, which is as global and encompassing as ever. But the Transparent Water Trio he co-leads with Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita is an elemental ensemble stripped down to the bones.
Captured on the 2017 album “Transparent Water” ( Otá Records ), the trio with brilliant Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles creates spellbinding music that seems to ripple joyously from the stage.
The trio plays the Freight & Salvage March 20-21 and two gigs at Kuumbwa Jazz on March 22.
“Omar’s music is very touching, very spiritual,” says the London-based Keita, whose gorgeous 2016 solo album “22 Strings” was named best album from Africa and the Middle East by the British music magazine Songlines. “I come from a background that is very different. My mother is from a griot, and dad was Keita, the lineage of the Mandinka royal family. But I have some unexplainable connection through the soul with Omar.”
Details: 8 p.m. March 20-21; Freight & Salvage, Berkeley; $36/$40; 510-644-2020, www.thefreight.org; 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. March 22; Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $26.25/$42; 831-427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org.
Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent