Stew is a roly-poly African American musician who wears snappy chapeaus and leads the Negro Problem—along with his collaborator Heidi Rodewald—which plays smart, jazzy rock songs with a sharp satirical bite. He’s a master of ebullient, wry, and earnest stage presence, as memorialized in the Spike Lee film of his marvelous semiautobiographical rock musical, Passing Strange. Like many American originals, Stew is aesthetically (and geographically) peripatetic. His new record, Making It, is about the politics of romance, music, and race. (If you get the chance, ask him to play his TED Talks single, “Black Men Ski.”) (Neptune Theatre, 1303 NE 45th St, www.stgpresents.org, $30 adv/$35 DOS, 9 pm, all ages)