Discoveries From globalFEST 2014

This past Sunday was a frenzied and unforgettable night in New York City: A dozen bands from as far away as Australia and the Congo (and as close as Mississippi), left it all on the stage for globalFEST, one of the most important world music events in North America, held each January at Webster Hall. The whole thing lasts just five hours, but it's spread over three stages, highlighting the incredible - and always surprising - range and reach of what world music is: Afro-Caribbean carnival music mingles with electronic dance; punk-pop collides beautifully with Ukrainian folk; the sounds of Bollywood, Congolese-Belgian hip-hop, psychedelic cumbia and more. It all comes together at globalFEST.

For this week's edition of All Songs Considered, NPR Music's Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR contributor and Afropop.org senior editor Banning Eyre, and Rob Weisberg of WNYC (who also hosts WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise) join Bob Boilen to revisit some of the highlights and favorite discoveries from this year's globalFEST.

Hear and see performances from this year's (and previous year's) globalFEST.

· The Bombay Royale

· Meet a band that crams vintage Bollywood, 1960s surf and blazing brass into a giddy new sound. The 11-piece Australian band, making its U.S. debut, seems happy to evoke memories of everything from the Village People to formulaic romances of the 1970s.

· Brushy One String

· A YouTube sensation whose song "Chicken in the Corn" has received more than four million views, Jamaica's Brushy One String has captured listeners' imaginations with his stripped-down style, as he uses his rich baritone to accompany a beat-up, single-stringed acoustic guitar.

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· The Wu-Force

· This is a brand-new band featuring clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn. The Wu-Force merges Appalachian folk and a punk sensibility with traditional Chinese music.

· DakhaBrakha

· The group mixes everything from punk-pop to traditional Ukrainian songs in cool yet beguiling textures, often with the close harmonies usually associated with Balkan music. But it's really the live shows that take DakhaBrakha beyond mere curiosity to utter brilliance

· Hassan Hakmoun

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Hakmoun and the other six members of his band layer soulful vocals, complex African polyrhythms, jazz-tinged synth and a deep rock groove into a satisfying whole. At its heart, his music remains warm, open and utterly joyful.

· Noura Mint Seymali

With her smoky-rich voice, this Mauritanian griot artist tips toward reggae, flamenco and rock along with traditional Sahelian tonalities and rhythms in a band that includes her husband, guitarist (and fellow griot) Jeich Ould Chighaly.

· Baloji

A Congolese-Belgian hip-hop artist pairs lilting African soukous with the swagger of American soul. With his electrifying stage presence and style to spare, Baloji had the globalFEST crowd wrapped around his finger

· KiT (Kuenta i Tambu)

KiT, or Kuenta i Tambu — "Stories and Drums" — takes music from the Caribbean island of Curaçao, merges it with European dance-floor music and kicks it all into high, sweaty gear.

· Yasmine Hamdan

A solo artist based in Europe after a childhood split between Lebanon, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Greece, the co-founder of the groundbreaking duo Soapkills blends new material with reworked traditional songs in a smoky-cool electro-pop setting

· Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta

Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta is a band from Arizona that splices together mambo — by way of Mexico — with psychedelic cumbia and other Latin styles. The result sounds like Perez Prado reconfigured for the 21st century.