STEVE'S PICKS:

Album: From Another World: A Tribute to Bob Dylan
Release Date: Feb. 11
Songs: “All Along the Watchtower” by Eliades Ochoa; “Blowin’ In the Wind” by Kek Lang

For ages, Bob Dylan has been reworking classic songs in concert and singing indecipherably to the point that even some of his most ardent fans sometimes have no idea what he’s playing. Well, not to give him any ideas, but check out this tribute. Thirteen acts from all over the world re-interpret Dylan songs in the folk and traditional styles of their cultures, and nearly entirely in their native languages, and the results are stunning.

But odds are that you wouldn’t be able to identify most of these songs, at least not right off the bat. They’re not covers, they’re transformations. Take the opening track, “All Along the Watchtower,” performed by Cuban singer-guitarist Eliades Ochoa. It’s nothing like Dylan — let alone the familiar Jimi Hendrix version. What it is like is, well, Eliades Ochoa, the veteran son artist who gained a global profile via his role in the Buena Vista Social Club.

And that’s the way it is throughout the album, conceived and produced by French world music producer Alain Weber. From Bengali duo Purna Das Baul & Bapi Das Baul (a nearly unrecognizable “Mr. Tambourine Man”) to Hungarian Rom group Kek Lang (a much more identifiable “Blowin’ In the Wind,” though sung in Romany with a lively traditional scat vocal part in the middle) to the Macedonian brass band Kocani Orkestar (turning the rhythms of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” inside out) to Egypt’s Musicians of the Nile (“Tangled Up In Blue” echoing through the Valley of the Kings), every performance is true to its locale, catching the spirit of Dylan with no thoughts at all to imitation. You have to wonder if some of these musicians had ever even heard of Bob Dylan before this.

And the pairing of artists and songs are not arbitrary. Weber shows depth of purpose giving “With God On Our Side” to Lhamo Dukpa, a Tibetan Buddhist from Bhutan, and Jewish-born Dylan’s Christian-period “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” to Muslim singer Sayfi Mohamed Tahar from Algeria, tying together the three Abrahamic religions. And there’s a wry poignance to hearing Salah Aghili’s version of “Every Grain of Sand,” another from Dylan-as-Christian, in the ancient classical styles of the Iranian deserts, the words of the American folk poet here replaced by those of 13th century Sufi poet Rumi. Totally worth deciphering.