TELL you what, this page is teeming with culture today.

It doesn't happen very often, admittedly - my knowledge of culture is limited to my fitful yoghurt intake and my continuing admiration of Chris Lonergan's elaborate Boy George-style dreadlocks.

However, it's strictly upper-echelon stuff from here on in, starting with the enormously respected Malian singer/songwriter/guitarist Rokia Traor (The Lighthouse, Poole, tonight, tickets on 01202 685222).

Rokia is widely regarded as West Africa's most exciting and precocious new talent, as bedazzled audiences from WOMAD to the Royal Albert Hall will readily testify.

Her freshly-released third album, Bowmbo, is a ground-breaking combination of traditional African roots music refracted through the contemporary worldview of a woman whose well-travelled upbringing saw her absorbing influences from European, American and Middle Eastern cultures.

Intense, subtle, sophisticated yet possessed of immense energy, Rokia has 'a voice to make the desert bloom', as The Times put it recently, and you'd be frankly certifiable to miss her.

Closer to home, the tireless second year BTEC Music students of Weymouth College have put together a new revue entitled Motown Mania (Weymouth College Theatre, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm, £5 adults/£3 students and children, tickets on 01305 208702).

As the title so wantonly suggests, this is a celebration of the era-defining yet timelessly vibrant music pumped out by Detroit's Tamla-Motown label in the 1960s and 70s by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Marvelettes, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles and The Four Tops while the likes of the Stooges and the MC5 were blowing the roofs off suburban garages a few blocks away.

The college's tribute to this remarkable music city sees the likes of The Rubbish Band, Cheese and Pap and The Chamber Choir performing their own unique and inimitable versions of classic Motown hits, and proceeds from the event go towards the Leukaemia Research Fund so the incentives to attend are stacked up to the rafters.

As a telling indication of just how foreign the notion of culture is to this page, my initial reaction on reading the press release concerning jazz saxophonist Renato D'Aiello and Canzone (Bridport Arts Centre, Saturday, £9/£7 members/concessions, tickets on 01308 424204) was to become absolutely starving.

I mean, Canzone (which actually means 'songs') sounds to my ears uncannily like calzone, which is a delicious folded pizza, and most of the music Renato and his band perform is loosely based around a collection of old Neapolitan songs - and my favourite pasta sauce is, yes, Neapolitan (or Napoletana as my lovely old mamma used-a to say in between bouts of plate-throwing).

Anyway, all of this is extremely beside the point. Yes, I know, just for a change.

Renato, pianist Alberto, bassist Nicola from Sardinia and the slightly less exotic-sounding (but no less adept) drummer Seb Rochford are giants in jazz circles: John Fordham of The Guardian says of Renato that he 'couples a domineering get-out-of-my-way sound with bounce and spontaneity, but he is also capable of considerable tenderness.'

Jazz fans in the area are in for another rare treat on Wednesday with the arrival in town of legendary American tenor/alto saxophonist Rickey Woodard (Hotel Rembrandt, Weymouth, Wednesday, doors open 7pm, £10, tickets on 01305 777412, 07941 269566 or 07952 085968).

Nashville-born Rickey combines a formidable reputation with a CV so illustrious that it's best you're sitting down before you read any further.

Drafted into the Ray Charles Band in 1980, Rickey has also performed worldwide with giants like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Horace Silver and Kenny Burrell, no less. Frank Sinatra?! That's as high as one can go in this life.

All of this is, of course, indicative of Woodard's skill and standing. Those in the know rhapsodise about his light, fluent soloing, influenced by Hank Mobley, Zoot Sims and George Coleman - a rarity in the post-John Coltrane years.

If you're a fan of the form, It doesn't get any better than this.

Finally, I received a very sweet and charming letter this week from Barbara, keyboard saucestress with melodic metal muthas Balance of Power (Mariners, Weymouth, Friday), and so touched was I by this gesture (so different from the usual flood of nail bombs one generally has to contend with) that I thought I'd reciprocate with this little plug for BoP.

It's not often you get a five-piece band in which everyone sings: Stand up and be counted Tim Talbot, Jez Lee, Jim Murphy, Spence Bates and the aforementioned Barbara, and lustily yodel the Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Journey, Guns & Roses, Scorpions, UFO and Van Halen songs that make up your mighty set.

By Barbara's calculations, the band members have 80 years' experience between them - which still makes them mere babes in the wood next to the Lonergan and I, whose first gigs are mentioned in the Magna Carta.