The Musical Worlds of WOMEX

Every business has its boondoggles, and for those in the world music trade, the World Music Expo — otherwise known as WOMEX — is it. The five-day event showcases new bands from every corner of the planet.

For the past couple years, the expo has been held in Seville, Spain. That means conference-goers, after tough days spent networking, scamming CDs and doing shots of weird ethnic liquors at the FIBES convention center, spend their nights eating tapas, drinking wine from Rioja and catching shows in the old city. One might wander in on a flamboyant Romanian brass band, like Damian & Brothers; or a streetwise Brazilian brass band, like Siba e a Fuloresta; or a slightly goofy, but very impressive harmonica quartet from Finland named Svang, whose recordings would make great public radio theme music.

Among the hot topics at WOMEX this year were the ongoing nightmare of musicians trying to get travel visas post-Sept. 11 and the general woes of the music industry wrestling with digital distribution. Another big story was the weakness of the dollar. Many acts are skipping U.S. tours because the exchange rate is so bad.

But the artistic story this year suggested it may be the most exciting time for world music since Paul Simon made Graceland. There's a crop of young American acts approaching the genre less as ethnomusicology and more like pop, from the hip-hop collage approach of New York's Balkan Beat Box to the emigre garage rock of Los Angeles' Dengue Fever, who headlined the festival's final night. Truly, you haven't lived until you've danced wildly to '60s-style Cambodian psychedelia with a few hundred drunken Spaniards.

And Africa remains an incredibly fertile source of music. The co-ed group Toumast is one of a number of great rock bands rooted, astonishingly enough, in the nomadic Tuareg tribes of Northwestern Africa.

Then there was the coming-out party for 24-year-old Seun Kuti, the second son of Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti. With members of his late father's band, Egypt 80, playing alongside younger musicians and with the words "FELA LIVES" tattooed across his back, Seun Kuti made world music that completely transcended the term: utterly African, yet thoroughly cosmopolitan.

It was the highlight of the WOMEX festival, which reminded me how the best art can assert cultural pride while promoting cross-cultural unity. It's a pretty good trick, and it's as necessary as ever.

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