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Put away whatever preconceptions you may have of the djembe, the traditional African drum that, lately, has become a favorite instrument of hippie drum circles.

Ignore the stereotype of the goblet-shaped, skin-covered drum as a staple of trustafarians, those trust-fund hipsters who congregate to bang in unison. Ryan Reardon, of the Asheville, N.C.-based band The Afromotive, has seen plenty of such sights in his hometown.

His band’s djembe player, on the other hand — well, put it this way — Adama Dembele is a 33rd-generation djembe player, which means his ancestors have been creating art with the instrument for 1,500 years.

“It’s feels great to play with someone like that,” Reardon told The Daily Times this week. “For some people, the instrument has this connotation as something you’d see a hippie carrying down the street, but no — this is serious, man. And when you hear him play, you know — ‘Oh, that’s what that instrument is for.’”

Not that Reardon or the other guys in The Afromotive are slouches in the instrument department. With an arsenal of musical weapons at their disposal, the band creates a primal, tribal atmosphere that uses rhythm as both the medium and the message, he said.

“It’s really all about locking in,” he said. “There’s a lot of percussion going on, a lot of rhythms in general; even the guitar part is rhythmic. It’s about locking down that pulse and keeping it there. Back when we first started, we would do more intricate drumbeats, more complicated stuff on a drumset, but over the years, we’ve realized that simplicity goes a lot further, sometimes, than the little things.

“We have so many instruments playing this rhythmic music, you have to keep it simple. We do more four-on-the-floor kind of stuff and just lock it in, because we want the crowd to feel that, too.”

The band got its start four years ago in the Asheville area, combining Dembele’s West African roots with American funk and the members’ individual experiences playing jazz, classical and rock.

“We start with an idea as the basis for the song, and from that simple idea is where it all sprouts from,” Reardon said. “If that seed is strong, if where you start the songs is strong, then all you need is your musicianship and your ears to develop the rest of it.”

The first out-of-town date the group played was at the venue to which they’ll return on Thursday night — World Grotto in downtown Knoxville. It was a good feeling, Reardon said, a sense of accomplishment that there might be life outside of being just a hometown band to the Asheville masses.

Not that such a fate is a bad thing; but when the chemistry on the stage is so electric, so palpable, it’s hard not to want to share it with whomever will listen, Reardon said.

“Once the night hits, it’s just a packed dance floor,” he said. “If a show starts early, depending on how many people are there, we might start off with a mid-tempo tune — ‘easy listening,’ if that term even exists in The Afromotive world — but really, we don’t think about that kind of thing.

“It’s not about anything except following that muse and asking what does this song, in itself, beg for? What does it need? What will make it the best that it can be?”