A Skull Session in Funk-amentals

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — In an impressive anatomy-of-funk lesson Thursday night at the Coach House, Me’Shell Ndegeocello and her band had the foot bone connected to the head bone.

No, the shorn, bespectacled bandleader with the glitz-averse bearing of a jazz musician was not up there doing strange bodily contortions. But the D.C.-raised, L.A.-based performer took what James Brown called the “good foot” of body-motivating funk and connected it to purposeful, engaging subject matter.

Along with her splendid, eight-member band, Ndegeocello (the former Michelle Johnson’s adopted name means “free like a bird” in Swahili) shaped a sophisticated, undulating and emotionally involving set. Hers may be the best form of neotraditional funk available in the hip-hop era.

Ndegeocello at times used rap and the cadences of the poetry slammer to convey meanings, but the payoff was in the playing and singing in a 100-minute set from her albums “Plantation Lullabies” and “Peace Beyond Passion.” Both have been hailed by critics and earned her a solid following, with SoundScan-monitored sales of more than 200,000 per release.

Playing to a near-capacity house, Ndegeocello first established her band’s ability to play restless, freely probing music with exacting precision. Federico Pena, the keyboards player, and guitarist Allen Cato emerged as especially distinctive, versatile band members. Pena was a master of audacious yet apt synthesizer colors, and Cato unleashed a cool gleam or a hot-lava flow as the unfolding, elongated songs required.

Ndegeocello held back at first, only singing or dabbing on keyboards, before she picked up her trademark electric bass and started pumping out percussive funk riffs.

On her albums, Ndegeocello has yet to find a fully cohesive way to link the various strands of her songwriting. Some of her songs depict smoldering eroticism or pining, unrequited lovers. Others put up an adamant but not shrill resistance to racism and homophobia, concentrating less on the evils of the perpetrators than on the humanity of the victims and the emotional toll of bigotry.

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In concert, her thematic contrasts seemed less jarring, given the band’s rich instrumental weave. It all held together, except perhaps for the conventional, but still enjoyable, pop-R&B; love song “Outside Your Door.”

“Free My Heart,” a yearning prayer, and “God Shiva,” depicting a prayer momentarily answered via an almost carnal mystical connection with the divine, were the show’s emotional and dramatic peak; Ndegeocello honored the songs’ inwardness yet made their intensity palpable to her audience.

A long encore ranged through the funk treasure chest, trotting out famous riffs from Funkadelic, James Brown and the Temptations. With mock sternness, Ndegeocello at one point admonished her backing singers for trying to sneak in a disco refrain from Chic.

It was funk played for the sheer heat and fun of it, proving that it’s also OK to leave the foot bone connected to the ankle bone and the ankle bone connected to the leg bone, all the better just to groove to the rhythm.