MUSIC

Yusef Lateef, at the Jazz Workshop through Sunday, is a versatile, unpredictable jazzman. He plays a lot of different instruments, mostly reeds, in a lot of different styles with wildly fluctuating bands. He was into African music in the late '60s, but lately he's gone somewhat commercial, recording nostalgic '30s swing material. It's hard to tell what you'll get here, but when he wants to be, Lateef is a real virtuoso.

The Persuasions, next door at Paul's Mall through Sunday, are a four-man singing group famous for having spurned any backup instrumentation for years and years. Word has it, however, that they've used a band from time to time in the last year, but that they still mostly stick to a cappella. As you'd expect, they have fine, smooth, well-harmonized voices and like to sing softish, intricately scored stuff.

Chuck Berry is at CapeCod Coliseum where most of the stars who come to the area play these days, on Friday night. Berry's widely touted as the father of rock and roll and some of his songs, like "Johnny B. Goode," are to rock concerts what "The Star Spangled Banner" is to baseball games. His shows these days are full of a raunchy, good-natured obsession with sex, as shown in that most frequent target of AM radio censoring bleeps, "My Ding-a-Ling." The James Montgomery Band, playing with Berry, is tight, bluesy, and always expected to burst into national prominence. For the moment they're still relatively unknown, but they could well be the best band in Boston, better than J. Geils.

Bonnie Raitt, another fine locally-produced musician, is playing with Mose Allison at the Music Inn in Lenox Saturday night. Raitt went to Radcliffe for a couple of years, left and learned how to play the blues, and is now a terrific singer and wailer. Allison is a cerebral and somewhat spacey jazzman, well-thought-of by the real cognoscenti.

The Harvard Pops Orchestra is playing a free concert Sunday at the Hatch Shell in the Charles River Esplanade. They aren't the Boston Symphony, but the Harvard Pops are still nothing to sneeze at--unless you have hay fever and are allergic to outdoors concerts--and are worth a look.