The finest and most adventurous female singer in Africa is moving on, once again. Rokia Traoré is giving three very different concerts in London this week, performing three sets of new music. At the weekend, she will be playing with young Malian musicians who trained at her Fondation Passerelle in Bamako, and then with her new guitar band, presenting songs from her next album. But first came this gently powerful acoustic tribute to her Malian roots and the remarkable history of a country that is in turmoil.

The setting was a charming, faded music hall in east London. Traoré, sporting cropped hair and a white dress, was perched on a stool flanked by two musicians, Mamadoba Camara playing kora and Mamah Diabaté on n'goni. Damou (Dream) is her version of stories from the Epic of Sundiata, a poem from the country's oral tradition that tells of the prophecies leading to the birth of Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mandé empire that spread across west Africa in the 13th century. It's a narrative that has been kept alive by the griots, Mali's hereditary musicians and historians, and though Traoré is not from a griot family, she proved to be as compelling a storyteller as she is singer.

She spoke quietly and intensely in French, occasionally raising her voice for dramatic effect, with translations of her stories of hunters, spirits or royal marriages shown on surtitles above the stage. Each major event was illustrated with a song, in Bambara, with Traoré's exquisite, cool, clear vocals matched against mesmeric, repeated riffs from her musicians. This was a rarity, a concert in which she never played guitar or danced, though she ended her bravely original performance by pushing away the microphone for a declamatory praise song that provided a reminder of her power and range.