World Music

Gunnar Madsen, co-founder of the inventive a cappella group "The Bobs," enriches the field of children's music in a style uniquely his own. His new album, “I’m Growing” (Gee, Spot! Records, $15. (800) 448-6369, www.Gunnar), is his best to date, with off-the-wall lyrics -- "I love that lady with the pumpkin hair / She smells as sweet as butter" -- and expert, wildly varied vocal and instrumental textures.

As you may have noticed, I've been on leave from this column for the last month or so (hoping you noticed is part of my new "visualize and you will manifest" regime). During this time, many important events occurred. None, however, were as difficult for me to hold my tongue about as the sudden ubiquity of an Internet video called "Dancing." For those who haven't been e-mailed the link under subject headings like "OMG, most amazing video ever!"

When music promoter Debbie Ohanian calls from her home in Miami Beach to tip me to some great new band, I always listen. In the past decade, she was one of the pioneers in bringing cutting-edge Cuban bands to the U.S., sometimes at personal risk, as when she staged the first concert in Miami for Los Van Van, despite violent protests. With the Cuban scene fading, I hadn't heard from Ohanian in a while -- until she called to rave about something that was totally foreign to me.

It WOULD be the vacation of a lifetime: Quebec, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Hungary, Vietnam and Taiwan in one fell swoop. But anyone interested in sampling the cultural traditions and contemporary arts of those countries without having to shell out the cash for an around-the-world plane ticket might want to visit the Music Center's “World City.” The free globe-trotting performance and workshop series begins its sixth season at the outdoor W.M.

On a moonlit African night in a leafy open-air bar, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate is peeling off an ethereal flood of kaleidoscopic riffs from a 21-string cow-skin-covered harp like one his forefathers have played -- for more than 70 generations. Past a motley array of modern-day musicians and a phalanx of traditional drummers, a twirling 2 a.m. crowd of Bamako's hippest has come to pay homage to a man many regard as the greatest kora player on the planet.

Rahim Alhaj "When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq" (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings) BENEATH the daily violence in Iraq lies a civilization dating back more than five millenniums. And if the capacity to create a musical culture is a hallmark of a civilized society, there is ample evidence that instruments with sophisticated capabilities existed in the early Mesopotamian city-states.

MICHAEL BROOK is in every way the globe-trotter. The Toronto-born musician-producer has performed in India, Moscow and the Canary Islands. Brook's new album, titled "RockPaperScissors," has a border-crossing tone in music and geography, having been recorded in locales including Bulgaria and England.

VINCENT KENIS has no idea what the music of Konono N?1 sounds like to someone hearing it for the first time. "I can't imagine how somebody who doesn't know about traditional Central African music hears it," he says. "Non-tempered heavy metal tropical rock or something!"

THE classroom turned into a huge wind chime, as 30 musicians wielding wooden mallets hammered on Balinese gamelan instruments, the mallets rising and falling in unison. Melodies from a dozen bronze xylophones shimmered over incessant drumbeats, and as a deep gong rippled, every face became more intense. "Sometimes I feel the music late at night, long after class is over," said Evan Phillips, a UCLA ethnomusicology major, as he pulled his shoes on at the session's end.