Born in Zimbabwe but now based in South Africa, Louis Mhlanga is an easy-going, breezy guitarist who veers between smooth jazz and a whole variety of African influences. The result is a light, upbeat album that's best when he avoids the noodling and sticks to the more sturdy African styles, with help from an impressive cast of famous friends. He has an excellent voice and manages well with just his own band behind him, as he proves with his upbeat guitar treatment of traditional Zimbabwean songs or Congolese rumba. But he's even better when other musicians join in, and the selection includes the gloriously cheerful Rhumba All the Way, which marks a welcome return for Senegal's Orchestra Baobab, and an easy-going collaboration with that great Zimbabwean singer Oliver Mtukudzi.

Elsewhere, he duets with Jamaican guitar hero Ernest Ranglin, and with Malian guitarist Habib Koita, on a drifting acoustic piece that suddenly develops into All Along the Watchtower. A classy summer album.