Whether it’s the Latin or British invasion, new tunes from foreign lands are constantly making their way to American shores.

And Toby Foyeh and his African Orchestra is joining the trend.

“Modern and traditional African music needs to be more accessible to the Western civilization,” Foyeh says. “The music we play is how we feel. African music should evolve into that.”

Toby Foyeh and his African Orchestra have had their share of success in their homeland and even in Europe, specifically in England, home of their record label, Kameleon Records.

But Foyeh envisions African music becoming more popular in America. He wants Americans to indulge in some of the sounds of this “great unknown music,” as he calls it. Foyeh said he remembers when African music first was fused with American sounds.

“Many tribes in West Africa would play church hymns to a West African beat,” he says. “Also, a lot of African music is based on a major blues scale — it was basically African blues, and that was our folk music.”

Influenced by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Foyeh even draws some ideas from heavy metal, among other things.

“Miles Davis and a lot of jazz is compatible with African music — about 15 to 20 percent,” he says. “In fact, Coltrane used African brass.”

Foyeh first envisioned mixing American and African music when he started playing at age 12. He picked up a guitar and started many bands throughout high school and college, all with the same fundamental vision — to fuse African music with jazz, rock, blues and pop.

“I’ve been in more than 20 bands with music styles ranging from rock to jazz, more than 50 percent of the bands played African music,” Foyeh says.

It wasn’t long after his college band started sharing some minor success that Foyeh started to realize that music could possibly work as a career for him.

He dumped his thoughts of being an engineer and left college with two degrees, one in music and the other in film. He hopes to make musicals in the future.

Foyeh learned guitar easily and picked up the flute while trying to give one of his old bands an African sound. The hardest thing for him to pick up was the traditional African percussion techniques.

“They were the hardest because of the different tunings,” Foyeh explains. “They are much different from American instruments — you really have to be taught by a master. Talking drums are definitely the hardest.”

Foyeh’s new album, “Jalolo,” has shared some success in his native land and is his first record to make the trip overseas to America.

In support of the album, the band decided to embark on a U.S. tour, and as Foyeh explains, they have been received very well.

“The people seem to enjoy us, the venues want the band back,” he says. “They have asked us to headline a festival in Virginia for late September and FOX television will be doing something, too.”

Although the United States has enjoyed his unique brand of African fusion, the crowds are much different here than in his home country of Nigeria.

“In Africa, everyone takes part, and there is lots of audience participation,” he says. “In Nigeria it is a custom, the audience ‘sprays’ the performers with money if they play well to show their appreciation of the band.”

Surprisingly though, Foyeh says Africans like to hear the English songs rather than the African-speaking songs because they can better understand what he is singing.

“We want to change and write more songs in English because people get into the music more if they understand what you are singing about,” he says.

For the next album, Foyeh has a vision of writing more African/jazz/pop fusion music.

“There is a vast amount of music in Africa that has yet to be toyed with,” he explains.

Foyeh has seen these two sides of music go without each other for far too long.

While Latin music is the big thing this year, it might be African next year — and Foyeh just might be leading the pack.