TIMES have changed, there are no more secrets," Amadou et Mariam, the Malian duo, sing on their album "Wati" (Circular). They could be singing about world music, which has opened up in all directions. This is the fifth annual survey in these pages of recent world-music releases, and musical boundaries have grown more amorphous than ever.

National boundaries have grown stronger, though. Since Sept. 11, 2001, obtaining a visa to tour the United States has grown more difficult for many musicians, particularly those from Islamic countries. Still, plenty of international performers reach New York City, where they can play for homesick expatriates alongside first-timers. And recordings and Internet connections still circumvent xenophobia.

The world-music category has always been a hodgepodge: field recordings by ethnomusicologists, popular music originally made to please a local audience, traditional music played by traditional musicians or repackaged for tourists, slick international hits in languages other than English. In all of them, Western listeners found the promise of genuine alternatives in both the sounds of the music and its purposes. Visions of otherness could be attached to a nontempered melody, a slinky rhythm or a penetrating voice.

The truth, as usual, grew more complicated. Cultures were rarely as isolated as would-be purists liked to imagine, and the reach of electronic media continues to increase. Still, listeners in search of seemingly pristine exotica can dig into a growing selection of recordings from the ethnomusicologists of yesteryear, like the reliable Anthology of World Music series being reissued on Rounder, and the novice-friendly Nonesuch Explorer series, which has now rereleased its catalogs of African and Asian music.

Recordings have a way of circulating to far-flung places, where disc jockeys can juxtapose and mix them every which way. The dance-floor remix with samples or guest performances by international musicians has become a subgenre in itself. And musicians, habitually wanderers and hybridizers, see little need to shut out possibilities. So Abdelli, from Algeria, cheerfully collaborates with musicians from Cape Verde, Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso on his album "Among Brothers" (Real World).

It's a big world, and this selection is geared toward music that emphasizes its connection to local and traditional styles. It deliberately and arbitrarily skips large swaths of what's sold as world music: foreign-language rock and pop, assemblages by Western disc jockeys, New Age meditations. It also skips reggae and Latin pop, which present an overwhelming number of releases. What's left ranges from ancient songs to 21st-century hybrids with ever more entangled roots. (CD's range in price from $14.99 to $19.99 a disc.)

Algeria

Abdelli, a Berber from Algeria who has lived in Brussels since 1987, hears musical kinships across continents. "Among Brothers" (Real World) begins with the stark sound of his voice and mandola (large mandolin), which he picks like a Middle Eastern oud. His own band includes Moroccan percussion and the Tunisian nay (reed flute). But his concise, modal songs — recorded before their accompaniment — are surprisingly compatible with the overdubbed Afro-Portuguese lilt of a Cape Verdean band, with booming African drums and the austere picking of Central Asian musicians.

Balkan Gypsies

Like Harley-Davidsons, Gypsy brass bands have long been renowned for their speed, heft and noise: an oom-pah that's unstoppable at any speed. Boban Markovic Orkestar's "Live in Belgrade" (Piranha) does pause for traditional ballads, and it eases back sometimes for Mr. Markovic's zigzagging fluegelhorn solos or saxophones that trill like bagpipes. But mostly it riffs and punches, swaggers and blares in Balkan odd meters or funky 4/4. Fanfare Ciocarlia, from Romania, is even faster and more aggressive on "Iag Bari" (Piranha). "The Rough Guide to Music of the Balkans" intersperses brass bands with related styles that show the brass bands aren't the only powerhouses; listen to the voice of Ezma Redzepova, from Macedonia. The Hungarian band Besh o droM plays a more self-conscious but still adrenalized fusion of music from around and beyond the Balkans; on "Can't Make Me!" (Asphalt Tango), it tosses in jazz and flamenco guitar and hip-hop scratching among the cimbalom and saxophones.

Brazil

Carnival is central to Brazilian music; samba drumming, by ranks of tightly coordinated percussionists, is central to Carnival. The double album "Batucada Brasileira" (Iris Music) shows how it's done. It's a two-CD set by the percussion core of the samba school Mocidade, recorded clearly enough to reveal every thud of a mallet and snap of a tambourine. If disc jockeys aren't already sampling this album, they should be. Carnival is the first thing Marisa Monte, Carlinhos Brown and Arnaldo Antunes sing about on their shared album, "Tribalistas" (Metro Blue). They collaborated on songwriting and sing most of the the vocals together, with Mr. Antunes, who led the rock group Titas, adding a lower-octave growl that recalls Squeeze. And they sing, mostly, about togetherness, love and what one song calls "carnalismo," in modest arrangements that usually revolve around Ms. Monte's acoustic guitar and Mr. Brown's percussion. The music is casual and graceful, not a grand statement about anything but a three-way friendship.

Recife, in northeast Brazil, has generated pop hybrids for the last decade, among them the electro-traditional charms of DJ Dolores and Orchestra Santa Massa's "Contraditorio?" (Stern's Brasil). DJ Dolores places children singing, rough-hewn voices and a fiddle called the rabeca in the foreground; under them is an inseparable amalgam of percussion and rhythm programming. The machines know their place behind the irreplaceable local particulars.

Britain

"The Rough Guide to Scottish Music" (World Music Network) mixes established (the Battlefield Band, Capercaille) and lesser-known musicians to suggest that traditionalism is thriving among young fiddlers, pipers and singers. The anthology is a showcase for Scotland's more dulcet side, downplaying abrasive sounds like bagpipes and savoring the clear voices of female singers.

Ffynnon has a haunting way of updating the traditional songs on "Celtic Music From Wales" (Green Linnet). It's a band of two women and one man, who harmonize over sparse drones from keyboards or electric guitar and bass. There are no drums, and the old songs, in Welsh and English, maintain their death-haunted dignity.

Cameroon

Coco Mbassi, born in Cameroon and transplanted to Paris, harmonizes and multiplies her melancholy alto on "Sepia" (Tinder), an album of delicate, inward-looking songs. The lyrics, in the Douala language, often preach Christian messages, but they're delivered with the sensuality of Sade and the ingenuity of Zap Mama. Vocals often float above little more than subdued hand drums and a syncopated acoustic bass. Although Ms. Mbassi hasn't abandoned African rhythms, her music aims not for the dance floor, but for a chill-out lounge or a private moment at home.

China

Wu Man plays the pipa, a Chinese lute that has long been used for dramatic, tone-painting solos. On "Pipa" (Naxos World), she uses untraditional backup: banjo, didgeridoo, drum machines. Her improvisations still have a traditional flavor — twangy melodies, shimmering sustained lines, nervous tremolos — but transplanted to a far less solemn climate.

Congo

Congolese rumba, one of Africa's most immediately beguiling and longest-lived styles, repatriates Afro-Cuban rumba back to Africa, smoothing out the vocals and layering on the guitar lines. Sam Mangwana, who has been performing for 40 years, goes international on "Cantos de Esperança" (Sono/Next Music), a largely acoustic album that juxtaposes modern soukous with more old-fashioned Cuban music and songs that draw on the Afro-Portuguese Angolan semba.

Ndala Kasheba, a Congolese guitarist who settled in Tanzania, is nowhere near as slick as Mr. Mangwana. But the band he leads on "Yellow Card" (Limitless Sky/Stern's) is bursting with life. His 12-string guitar and an infusion of East African rhythms give Mr. Kasheba's soukous a special heft that doesn't make it any less luminous.

Cuba

The aftermath of the multimillion-selling "Buena Vista Social Club" album, which showed how old Cuban songs could still move the world, has been an outpouring of vintage Cuban songs. The Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro is entitled to join in; founded in 1927, since the death of its founder it has continued to play the courtly old songs in lean, unplugged septet arrangements topped by trumpet and the small guitar called tres. "Poetas del Son" (Le Chant du Monde) revisits its favorite repertory with vivid sound and just a hint of 75th-anniversary sentiment. "Hecho en Cuba" (Ultra/Escondida) digs out what seem to be older, peppier recordings by the members of the Buena Vista Social Club, though it provides little information.
Bobi Céspedes's "Rezos" (Six Degrees) has a more modern take on Cuban music as it mingles electronic beats and basslines with Afro-Cuban percussion and guitars. Ms. Céspedes, an expatriate since 1959, sings prayers to Yoruba deities and impressions of California in the leathery voice of a Yoruba celebrant; the music is sleek without getting gimmicky.

Ethiopia

It's hard to believe that some of the tracks on "Ari Polyphonies" (Ocora) come from groups of people instead of tape loops. Voices mesh in rippling chants that are cross-timed against handclaps and each other, with men and women taking complementary parts and no one missing a beat. Sometimes flutes are added, also overlapping. The complexity would daunt a classically trained choir, but not, apparently, an Ethiopian wedding party.
Iceland

Steindor Andersen, a traditional singer (and fisherman) who has toured and recorded with Sigur Ros, sings excerpts from the unaccompanied epic song cycles called rimur, which can last for hours, on "Rimur" (Naxos World). The songs' stately, straightforward melodies can sound like Celtic sean nos songs or liturgical chants, sustained and liquid. "Rimur" is a largely austere album of solo vocals, but a few tracks bend tradition, adding the drone of didgeridoo or a reticent Irish harp.

India

In India, the songs from Bollywood musicals are pop hits. Here, they are campy jaw-droppers, cheerfully stirring together unlikely East-West mixtures of tabla drums and high, cutting Indian voices with surf guitar or Latin bongos or flamenco strumming. "Bollywood: 15 Classic Hits From the Indian Cinema" (Hip-O) samples songs from the 1970's to 2001 for a glimpse of a hyperactive melting pot.

Fans of free-jazz saxophone or Moroccan jajouka music could easily take to "Periya Melam: Chidambaram Temple" (Ocora), Hindu music from southern India. In music for temple feasts, ragas are taken up by blaring conical oboes and drums; there are improvisations over drones, full of sliding and wriggling notes, that lead into jagged, breakneck melodies, buzzing with devotion.

Ireland

Tommy Peoples, a fiddler from Donegal, has been sharpening up traditional tunes with rough-edged ornaments and sly variations since he was in the Bothy Band in the 1970's. "Waiting for a Call" (Shanachie) is a straightforward set of reels, jigs, slip jigs and strathspeys, played in duos or small groups and mostly recorded in 1985. Five tunes recorded in 2002 with the guitarist John Doyle show Mr. Peoples still has his bite.

Patrick Street is an occasional alliance of Irish musicians who maintain busy solo careers. But when they get together, they're thoroughly cooperative. On "Street Life" (Green Linnet), Kevin Burke's fiddle and Jackie Daly's accordion merge as one dancing melody in traditional tunes, pushed by Ged Foley's strategically shifting guitar accompaniment. They all lend self-effacing support to traditionalist songs by Andy Irvine, who brings his kindly voice to current political concerns.

Mali

Great claims have been made for Mali in recent years as the fountainhead of the blues. Whether or not the modal guitar patterns and hortatory voices of Mali's ancient jali (or griot) songs are the main source for the blues, they're still the starting point for some of modern Africa's most compelling music. The compilation album "Mali Lolo" (Smithsonian Folkways) is an excellent introduction.

Amadou et Mariam, a married couple who met as students at a school for the blind, have long tried to merge Malian music with funk and blues, and on past recordings they've tipped over on the Western side. "Wati" (Circular) gets it right: there's a Malian spirit in the circling guitars and rippling vocal lines even when the band rocks out.

Salif Keita, the Malian singer known worldwide, recast his songs for acoustic instruments on last year's extraordinary album "Moffou" (Universal), and more traditional griots have followed suit. The improvisational expanses of jali songs aren't built with pop verses or choruses in mind. But two recent albums provide just enough structure, setting declamatory voices amid acoustic guitars, drums, flutes and backup voices that provide a handle for listeners. Kandia Kouyate, one of Mali's most celebrated female griots, unleashes her commanding voice on "Biriko" (Stern's Music). Kasse Mady Diabate, who spent time in Paris and has collaborated with Taj Mahal, has a gentler voice; he also includes Cuban-style tunes amid his traditional material on "Kassi Kasse" (Narada World). And the quietly hypnotic guitarist and singer Boubacar Traore has just released a worthwhile best-of collection, despite its misleading title: "The Bluesman of Mali" (Wrasse).

Mexico

Ritchie Valens didn't write his three-chord masterpiece, "La Bamba." It's an old song from Veracruz, called a son jarocho, which is traditionally played on a fast-plucked harp and some frantically picked and strummed guitars. "La Bamba: Sones Jarochos From Veracruz" (Smithsonian Folkways) explores the repertory of a son jarocho trio, José Gutiérrez y los Hermanos Ochoa, pelting listeners with notes like a string-driven carousel.

Son jarocho is just one of the styles represented on "The Rough Guide to the Music of Mexico" (World Music Network), which covers the continuum from traditional music — as familiar as mariachi, as hopped-up as banda (brass band) — to the warped rock of Café Tacuba. Through it all is the Mexican gift for lamenting deeply one moment and laughing the next.

Myanmar

The classical songs performed on "Mahagita: Harp and Vocal Music of Burma" (Smithsonian Folkways) are transparent duets. The music glides weightlessly, suddenly skitters ahead or surrounds a gentle melody with lacy counterpoint; a tiny bell and the click of a clapper pinpoint the underlying rhythms. To a Western ear, the music stays sweetly elusive Nigeria King Sunny Ade had been recording for more than a decade before he introduced the multileveled guitars and drums of Nigerian juju to the international market in the early 1980's. "The Best of the Classic Years" (Shanachie) collects recordings he made before 1974, and they are already the work of a master bandleader. The music has the precise counterpoint and open-ended pace the world would hear a decade later, etched in a stereo mix that clearly reveals each part. "Synchro Series" (IndigeDisc) combines the album he made for Nigerian release immediately before he recorded his international debut in 1982 ("Juju Music") and the one he released immediately afterward. Like an appendix to "Juju Music," it shows some of the material he compressed for pop listeners and then toys with the loops and echoes of dub reggae in outtakes from "Juju Music To hear juju's ancestry, try some highlife, the ebullient dance music — mingling local rhythms with calypso, rumba and funk — that dominated Nigeria and Ghana in the 1960's and 70's. "The Kings of Highlife" (Wrass) concentrates on guitar-centered Nigerian highlife; "The Rough Guide to Highlife" (World Music Network), which has five of the same songs, also includes the big-band side of Ghanaian highlife. Pakistan The devotional Sufi songs called qawwali found fans among nonbelievers and rock fans, with their handclapping beat, their terse melodies and the riveting improvisations of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. One of the few younger singers to suggest the fierce, almost hysterical edge of Khan's style is Faiz Ali Faiz. He even presumes to sing one of Khan's songs, "Allah Hu," on a live album, "The New Qawwali Voice" (World Village)," which ascends to peak after peak.

Senegal

Senegal's best-known musician, Youssou N'Dour, has long reached for a worldwide audience with his songs of conscience and compassion and his soaring voice. Yet he manages to sound more Senegalese with every refinement of his musical fusion. "Nothing's in Vain" (Nonesuch) has the transparency of acoustic arrangements even when electric instruments slip in. Amid the koras (harp-guitars) and balafons (xylophones) and the six-beat pattering of Senegalese mbalax, the melodies and hooks welcome Western ears. Mr. N'Dour has now remedied the obligatory French ballad that has often been the downfall of his albums; this time, the chanson accordion is levitated by Senegalese percussion. "The Rough Guide to Youssou N'Dour and Étoile de Dakar" collects Mr. N'Dour's early Senegalese recordings from the late 1970's to 1982; its low-fi recordings present a young, confident singer and a band that's already sure of the national style it's determined to create.

The duo Pape and Cheikh sing modern mbalax on "Mariama" (Real World). They admire close-harmony American groups like the Everly Brothers and Simon and Garfunkel, so there's a touch of folk-pop, but not too much; earnest acoustic guitars are enveloped in percussion and funk.

Orchestra Baobab formed in 1970 to play a Senegalese variant of the Afro-Cuban rumba that was popular across West Africa. It reunited to tour in 2001 and recorded the sublimely suave "Specialist in All Styles" (Nonesuch) last year, with Mr. N'Dour as a producer. The album revives Baobab's old rumba style, makes a trans-Atlantic connection with a guest vocal by Ibrahim Ferrer from Cuba, and also tosses in a little ska, reggae and mbalax, with some quietly startling guitar solos by Barthélémy Attisso. Orchestra Baobab is touring the United States again this summer.

Gokh-Bi System adds hip-hop to a Senegalese continuum. Its album "Message From Home/Suma Deuk Waay" (World Rhythms) sets positive-thinking raps (in English as well as Senegalese languages) to handmade music: percussion, singing and riffs plucked on the ekonting, a Senegalese lute. Hip-hop takes a joyful, respectful place alongside traditionalism.

South Africa

The soundtrack album for "Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony" (ATO) features the music that emerged when South African traditions met imported hymns and gospel: thrilling solo and close-harmony singing from voices both hearty and confiding. The "Amandla!" soundtrack includes some jazz, but it's the singers — professionals, community choirs, prisoners — who exemplify the resolute dignity that conquered apartheid. One of the album's standouts, Vusi Mahlasela, has his own album coming out next month.

Brenda Fassie, the best-selling bad girl of South African pop, has been buoyant through 20 years of hits and scandals. Her latest album, "Myekeleni" (EMI/Stern's Music), sung in South African languages with two songs in English ("They All Want Me Down" and "Mama I'm Sorry"), covers the bases from tootling organ and three-chord mbaqanga to thumping house and kwaito.

Spain

The bagpiper Susana Seivane's "Alma de Buxo" (Green Linnet) starts with what could be Scottish reels. But they're polkas from Galicia, a region of Spain with its own bagpipes. Ms. Seivane plays old and recent Galician tunes, backed by a varied mixture of electric instruments and traditional drums, tambourines and Basque accordion. There is a telling juxtaposition on the album: a pair of tunes piped by Ms. Seivane's grandfather, with percussion, and then by Ms. Seivane, backed by a group. Her backup is more genteel, but she knows all her grandfather's spiky ornaments.

Sudan

Ten calabash horns or 10 bamboo flutes — each tuned to a different note and honking at the precise syncopated moment to construct a riff or a melody — are at the core of the village celebrations recorded on "Waza: Blue Nile — Sudan" (Wergo). It's music of the Berta people, who live on the border of Sudan and Ethiopia. As women sing and ululate and men play woodblocks or drums, the short melodies hop continuously around the ensembles in pointillistic staccato, conjuring a rhythmic hive of horns or a stuttering calliope of flutes. Although some of the horn tracks are frustratingly short, the flute pieces are dizzying