Star Rating: ****

It began with music created to have them dancing in the isles and wound up with them dancing in the aisles, in their seats and - with a threat of severe overcrowding - on the stage. Celtic Connections' Celtic-Senegalese ceilidh celebrated poets, pitched Gaelic song in with dusty-plains slide guitar, mourned the dead in battles and actually found a Gaelic love story where nobody left, got sick or died, all courtesy of Jenna Cumming's "four-piece trio".

The Inverness-born singer even added a Gaelic Happy Birthday to You for her accompanying twins, Aaron and Nathan Jones, to a set where she and her mentor, Mary Ann Kennedy, shared songlines with both gusto and quiet reflection. Then, following meditations on African streetlife to acoustic guitar and stealth-percussion backing, the party started.

Music doesn't become entirely incidental with Baaba Maal's crew, although it does lapse into a supportive role in a show that's eye-poppingly visual. Apparently elastic-jointed dancers explode across the stage, a breakdancer crams enough press-ups for a whole school's penance into 10 seconds and a drummer does his own take on the dance of the seven veils, aka the strip of the dozen pairs of pants.

The star of the show, though, is not Baaba Maal himself but his talking drummer, who illustrates exactly why his instrument is so called. Exchanging clattering drumskin howls with his oppo on congas and Baaba Maal himself, he could almost be the band's lead singer - and his communications were clear. "Glasgow," he pummelled, "get up offa yer seats." And lo, they obeyed.