Every January the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) http://www.apapnyc.org/Pages/default.aspx gathers in New York City for it's annual conference, bringing together a few thousand of the most influential members of the performing arts community in North America and beyond for five days of networking, panels, workshops and performer showcases. Each year the event grows bigger, attracting more artists and important, satellite showcases such as globalFest and Winter Jazz Fest. This year Nat Geo Music sent special correspondent Evangeline Kim to report on APAP and globalFest.

Part of the excitement generated by APAP's conference in winter-frozen January New York now has very much to do with heated anticipation for what has become the New Year's great world music festival showcase in one night at Webster Hall: globalFEST.

This year's 8th annual edition of globalFEST was by far the best yet. It's possible that more emphasis on traditional music by the 3 producers, Isabel Soffer - Director of Programming, World Music Institute, Shanta Thake - Director, Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, and Bill Bragin - Acidophilus: Live and Active Cultures, helped make the event such an elated, total experience.

Each of the 3 showcase stage floors gave focus to 13 distinct musical traditions, some more modernized than others. There was less emphasis on global fusions, which are the hardest to achieve convincingly presenting-wise, as fusions tend to be more intellectually conceived - a head trip of experimental exuberances - rather than deeply felt, grounded-in-tradition, musical coherence. However, globalFEST has, historically, discovered exceptional fusion groups.

For the most part, each performance, whether a big band sound or a smaller intimate duo, struck a high level of consistent quality with elevated, intense energies - there was nothing lackluster in any of the performances. The challenge of programming multiple performance showcases in one night became for globalFEST 2011, an art this time around.

The main ballroom kicked the night off in grand style with the Rhythm of Rajasthan ensemble, a seated quartet of turbaned musicians on harmonium, dholak drum, double flutes, and the sarangi fiddle. They'd traveled all the way to New York, carrying the heat from the Great Thar Desert in western Rajasthan. Their plaintive, quickening 4/4 rhythm melodies were accompanied by a woman dancer who swirled around in her glittering veils, flaring skirt, and ringing ankle bells, while balancing a towering headdress of 7 pots and carefully stepped on up-turned saber blades.

Four large, spectacular bands followed with blazing horns and irresistible dance percussion sections: Pernambuco, Brazil's Orquestra Contemporanea de Olinda brought on a heady brew of Northeast Brazil's carnival frevo music mixed with rock and funk with a toss of ska, all woven with Maracatu beats. Bogata, Colombia's La-33, super-charged the stage with Colombian-style salsa with jazzy brass riffs, and from the crowd's reaction was one of the most popular acts for the evening.

Haiti's RAM filled the room with Port-au-Prince carnival rhythms from the country's misik raisin movement. The group was founded by Richard A. Morse, a Puerto Rican born, Haitian-American singer song-writer, who returned to his ancestral country and became enamored of the country's music and spiritual traditions. The RAM (bearing his initials) repertoire is a bold, up-tempo, mesmerizing sound soaring to rock-anthem-like heights, yet faithful to vodou roots, lyrically and rhythmically.
Dub-wise from Latin America, Novalima was a cutting-edge blend of Afro-Peruvian traditional music and global DJ culture. This was the perfect upper room finale for globalFEST: late-night club-atmosphere music with funked bass lines, heavy on the electronica reverb, with donkey jaw-bone percussions to boot.

The middle ground floor Marlin Room was boiling with packed audiences and featured some seriously good musicianship. The great Garifuna star singer-composer and guitarist from Honduras, Aurelio Martinez and his Garifuna Soul group takes every performance opportunity to promote the resistence cause of his marginalized Afro-Amerindian community in the Caribbean along with his group's powerful cascades of polyrhythms and aching, bittersweet melodies. His globalFEST appearance was no exception to his passions. When Aurelio started to dance and shake, his gurgling laughter banished all cares and the intense thrill of life's joys took over.

Chamber Music by Ballake Sissoko & Vincent Segal was one of the most anticipated appearances for the evening and their performance was superlative. To have experienced live the collaboration between a Malian griot master kora player whose instrument dates back to Mali's 13th century court music and a 21st century trip-hop/classical French cellist was just extraordinary. Glissandos, trills, plucks and pizzicatos between the two flowed back and forth effortlessly with thoroughly delightful and surprising chordal harmonies.

Emerging newer Senegalese singer, Yoro N'Diaye, a dread-locked folk balladeer, is part of the younger generation's mellower, roots-acoustic sound - minus the frenetic mbalax-style thrashing drums. Yoro's vocals were infused with the spiritual fervor instilled by Senegal's spiritual Sufi guide, Cheikh Bamba. He gave his band their due with bright solo moments on balaphon and percussions with easy aplomb. The gentler dance rhythms based on traditional folk rep are refreshing - clearly distanced from Dakar's harder, mbalax and rap grooves.

The Congolese super guitarist Diblo Dibala and band tore up the room with his sweet-tempo soukous- rumba rhythms, one of Africa's most beloved dance styles. A consummate entertainer, Diblo knows how to please a crowd and had 4 hip-swiveling women singer-dancers onstage who had the entire room shaking and women jumping on stage to join the party action.
Downstairs in the Studio Room, the musicians transported us to Hawaii, Cuba-in-New York, Egypt, and in the final concert, somewhere in-between North India and New York. What a geographically thrilling carpet-ride the whole night was, in retrospect.
Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole was the very first Hawaiian performer in globalFEST history, and it was worth the wait. Already a 5 time winner of the Hawaiian Grammy equivalent, the light-hearted 28 year-old tradition-bearer of Hawaiian hula culture, Kaumakaiwa with his flowing mane of hair tucked back, delivered a concentrated performance of traditional songs with just enough translation to draw in the audience. Accompanied by a rhythm guitarist, his vocal range was transcendent, from a rich, fulsome baritone to his wittily tabbed "skinny-girl" falsetto.

Leave it to globalFEST to showcase one of New York City's most popular Afro-Cuban bands led by Havana-born master percussionist and vocalist, "Pedrito" Martinez. If you want real, authentic Afro-Cuban rumba without booking a flight to Cuba, the Pedrito Martinez Group is it. Pedrito's deft style as a percussionist was honed during his teens by performing with some of Cuba's greatest legends, including Tata Guines, Lazaro Roos, Pancho Quinto, and Los Munequitos de Mantanzas. Since moving to New York in 1998, his superb knowledge of Cuban rhythms has yielded awards, recording work with luminaries, and a steady gig at the Guantanamera Restaurant in the city. Watch him dance that utterly seductive guaguanco with Ariacne Trujillo, his female vocalist and keyboardist, also from Havana.

Certainly one of the most charming groups to emerge during the festival was the Egyptian ensemble Zikrayat ("Memories" in Arabic), based in New York. Led by Palestinian-American director and violinist Sami Abu Shumays, the group performed a classical acoustic set with the traditional instrumentation once heard on the soundtracks of mid 20th century golden-age Egyptian cinema, an era of glamorous romance. The two male crooners sang gentle songs of yearning and love with such expressive melismatic emotions, and adding to the delight, the Egyptian-style Raqs Sharqi belly-dancer held the room spell-bound.
The festival's last performance was a grand, explosive finale by Red Baraat, the first and only dhol 'n' brass band in the States. Led by the charismatic dhol drummer, Sunny Jain, the group is a fantastic, innovative fusion of North Indian Bhangra rhythms with brass funk via New Orleans. Sunny's facial expressions of fierce concentration alternating with broad smiles reflected this intense mix of Bollywood film music, traditional Punjabi thrashing beats, and even a Sufi devotional song.

Bravo to the globalFEST 2011 producers!