Bogart's learned its lesson Saturday about setting up chairs at an India.Arie show. The up-and-coming soul singer, headliner of the “Sisters of Hip-Hop & Soul” package tour, put on an hour-long set that had the once-seated crowd standing and grooving along.

        At the onset, tables and chairs were arranged on the club's main floor. DJ Jazzy Joyce first took the stage, cutting up stuff from her native New York: LL Cool J's “Rock the Bells”; DMX's “Party Up”; tunes from the Bad Boy catalog. But none of that went down before she stopped her act and demanded that all the chairs be folded up and put away. The people in the front of the house complied and then formed a pit that remained through the night.

        You can't blame Bogart's for setting up the chairs. India.Arie's music is as laid back as a La-Z-Boy recliner. She put her deep '70s-soul vibe to acoustic arrangements as well as full-band treatment. Bill Withers is as good a comparison to her as anyone; her take on “Just the Two of Us,” balanced out with her sparse acoustic-guitar playing, was one of the night's finer moments.

        Her original stuff, coming from her correctly titled album Acoustic Soul, dominated the set. Her four-piece band rocked a great tune called “Brown Skin,” which doubles as the subtle black-identity song of the year and a joy-of-sex anthem.

        Most of the other tunes were of the universal-love variety, such as the powerful show-closing ballad “Ready for Love.”

        Mystic, the other performer on the bill, put on a show as effortlessly satisfying as the headliner's. Rapping and gently crooning her pro-women, anti-bling-bling platform, she had a lot to say, and she never said it in the sort of heavy-handed way that can make a mere Lauryn Hill award-acceptance speech a chore to endure.

        She told the crowd that on a previous tour with Digital Underground, they would ask the crowd to shout in joy as a tribute to the late Tupac Shakur. She had the Bogart's crowd perform the same act, and — second only to the en masse removal of chairs — it was a great communal moment.

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