Showcase for global sounds

GlobalFEST

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St., Manhattan

How much: $40. Call (866) 468-7619 or visit www.ticketweb.com.

While the recording industry continues to find footing in the dotcom age -- witness the fall of Tower Records -- the world music field has slowly established itself over the past 15 years, though it remains comparatively small.

Since world music artists have been -- and will be in the foreseeable future -- confined to life outside the mainstream, their success has been the result of pluck or luck or the occasional movie soundtrack. But in the decentralized world of the Internet, there are more gatekeepers: An artist can be discovered through buzz on MySpace, iTunes or National Geographic's new comprehensive world-music site, as well as a handful of area noncommercial FM radio stations (WFMU, WNYC, WFUV) that dedicate time to the form.

One of the surest ways for talented performers from outside America to convert new American fans is to get out in front of an audience and let their showmanship haul fans over the language barrier.

The hurdle is to get booked. Sunday's GlobalFEST in Manhattan features a baker's dozen of world music performers that the bakers believe are ready for larger consumption.

GlobalFEST, now in its fourth edition, was created by Bill Bragin of the Public Theater, Maure Aronson of Boston's World Music Inc., and the World Music Institute's Isabel Soffer of West Orange.

Created to coincide with the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in New York, GlobalFEST gives half-hour showcases to performers hand-picked for their potential. The artists then play to an auditorium stuffed with bookers from venues across North America. This year, the showcase moves to Webster Hall after outgrowing the Public Theater. In previous years, GlobalFEST sold out nearly a month in advance.

Soffer noted that people often trust their local performing arts center to book interesting new artists, so they will take a chance to see someone unfamiliar. For that reason, GlobalFEST could be the catalyst for an artist who only lacks exposure.

The GlobalFEST lineup is evidence of the vibrancy and kaleidoscopic landscape of world music today. World music -- an unwieldy label to begin with -- has become fascinatingly complex, particularly with the upsurge of performers who are ever more difficult to pigeonhole.

Take, for example, Lila Downs. Born to a Mexican mother and an American father, she grew up alternating between the contrasting cultures.

Though Downs' initial albums reimagined the ancient indigenous music of Mexico, her latest, "Cantina," tackles more contemporary popular songs that are close to the heart of most Mexicans. The former Deadhead shows a sure hand with these Mexican chestnuts, unfurling a huge voice that can shake the roof. With her husband, Vineland native Paul Cohen, Downs touches up the tequila-soaked old music with daubs of contemporary colors: an electronic flourish, a subterranean reggae beat, a rap-inspired turn.

Then there is Sara Tavares, who was born in Lisbon to parents from Cape Verde, but was raised by a Portuguese woman. Her debut, "Balance," is softly swinging pop with no strong ties to one tradition, an appropriate soundtrack to the lives of second-generation Africans in the West.

Much of the world music catalog is actually traditional music from a particular region, but the leading export artists either modernize or synthesize these older genres, making them accessible to wider audiences.

Andy Palacio has been a big star in the small country of Belize playing high-energy "punta rock." His forthcoming "Watina" is a gorgeous collaboration of young and old musicians from the African-descended Garifuna people of Belize. Palacio said he wants to "show the world that Garifuna (culture) is really a broad and deep untapped resource... What we did was experiment with traditional forms."

The slice of the old world explored by Les Primitifs du Futur is American jazz and blues filtered through the smoky ambiance of a French dance club from the 1930s. Playing the accordion-centered style called musette, Les Primitifs playfully recreate a sepia-toned milieu of couple dancing and romance, when music was more handmade and not subject to processing by a giant media industry.

The North Carolina group the Carolina Chocolate Drops show how world music has created an international circuit for performers to bring their regional music -- including American -- to foreign audiences. The band of three young black musicians plays North Carolina's banjo-dominated Piedmont music, which predates bluegrass, and was played by black as well as white musicians. The group sheds light on a largely forgotten facet of African-American culture: blacks introducing the African-derived banjo to America; first to blacks and, then through minstrel shows to white audiences.

"We are tickled and honored to be picked," said Rhiannon Giddens of the Drops. "This is our world music."

Ultimately, GlobalFEST shows that the state of world music is encouraging, resting in the hands of gifted performers and the hands of those who applaud them and then pass them along to others.

As Tavares said, "I'm looking for musical friends."