By JON PARELES

WOULD that the state of world music were the state of the world. In the music, boundaries are wide open, curiosity leads to cooperation, memories are long but the lessons of history are positive ones. In the world, well . . .

World music, that happily vague category, encompasses raw field recordings and slick non-Western pop, traditional music and countless twists on traditionalism; the term is also applied to everything from crosscultural fusions to club music with exotic samples to new-age meditation albums. No matter. The broad rubric holds a wealth of music that is now more accessible than ever before. And while major labels have largely lost interest in world music, independents have been busy, while listeners are no longer dependent on the shelf space or classification skills of local record stores.

With the Internet, CD's manufactured abroad are a few clicks away at large retailers or dedicated specialists like the Latin-music experts at descarga.com. Digital distribution brings the music even closer. World music has its own clearinghouse for downloads at calabashmusic.com, where it's easy to stock an iPod with music from Uzbekistan or Curaçao or just read up on them. Subscription services like Rhapsody and eMusic have a surprising amount of international offerings.

And the Smithsonian Institution has just gone online with the ethnographic answer to iTunes: smithsonianglobalsound.org, with museum-quality annotation and royalties paid to musicians. Information and recommendations are also available at sites like worldmusiccentral.org and afropop.org.

What follows is just a dip into the cornucopia of world-music albums released over the past year or so. These albums are the perfect antidote to xenophobia, and a reminder that creativity doesn't stop at national borders or language barriers. (Prices range from $13.49 to $18.49 for one CD, to $17.95 for a two-CD set.)

Argentina

Tango isn't the only accordion music out of Argentina. The accordionist Chango Spasiuk (whose grandparents were Ukrainian immigrants to Argentina) plays chamamé, music from northeastern Argentina, where it meets Brazil and Paraguay, forging his own compositions from folk materials. His mostly instrumental album "Tarefero de Mis Pagos: Songs From the Red Land" (Piranha) sometimes points toward South America, sometimes toward Europe. Mr. Spasiuk's pieces often draw on a brisk six-beat Argentine rhythm, underlined by percussion from Argentina and beyond; they can also hark back to polkas and waltzes. Pieces like "Scenes From Life on the Border" are a step removed from their folk roots, but with a group that includes both Mr. Spasiuk's accordion and the smaller tango accordion, the bandoneon, there's still plenty of huffing and hooting.

Armenia

Purity and a haunted, resolute stillness pervade Hasmik Harutyunyan's "Armenian Lullabies" (Traditional Crossroads). The words to the songs are about rocking a child to sleep, but the music barely sways. Ms. Harutyunyan sustains the almost glacial melodies in a voice both kindly and doleful, and for most of the album, she is accompanied by only an instrument or two; there are long stretches that her voice shares with only one unchanging note from a reed flute. The effect is so intimate and timeless, it's hard to imagine the dreams of the child listening.

Brazil

Brazilian pop revels in scrambling past and present, which makes for some delightfully disorienting pop on Paula Morelenbaum's "Berimbaum" (Universal Music Latino) and Silvério Pessoa's "Batida Urbanas: Projeto Micróbio do Frevo" ("Urban Beats: Project Microbe of Frevo" (Companhia Editora de Pernambuco).

Ms. Morelenbaum, who sang for a decade with the bossa nova titan Antonio Carlos Jobim, sends bossa novas and sambas into an electronic hall of mirrors on "Berimbaum." It's a collection of songs by the poet and songwriter Vinicius de Moraes, and her nonchalant voice is backed by a mixture of live musicians and samples that go ricocheting between lounge music and breakbeats, often multiplying into precise echoes. Bebel Gilberto has also been exploring this zone of electro-bossa, but Ms. Morelenbaum and her crafty producers have plenty to add.

Mr. Pessoa, who was a prime mover in the group Cascabulho, takes wilder leaps. He has been re-examining the music of northeastern Brazil, first forró and now frevo, carnival songs in a style somewhere between a samba and a military brass band. His album remakes frevos from the 1950's and 60's as mutating, hallucinatory tunes that might use the old oom-pah, a dub-reggae undertow, the whistling swoop of a synthesizer or a brash rap in Portuguese. He's clearly fond of the old songs and ready to shake them up completely.

Congo

Congo's best-known music is soukous, the rumbas that bounced across the Caribbean and back and, in Africa, turned into smoothly irresistible dance tunes with sweet voices and pealing, twining lines of guitars and horns. Kekele is an alliance of musicians who have played in some of Congo's best-known bands, and on "Congo Life" (World Music), they feature acoustic instruments - guitars, woodwinds, marimbas - in pristinely recorded soukous that's no less danceable for its gentle arrangements.

But Congo holds other music, too. Konono No. 1's "Congotronics" (Crammed Disc, also available as a download at www.emusic.com) introduces a 25-year-old band that amplifies thumb pianos, called likembes, through homemade equipment built from, among other things, magnets out of junked cars; its percussion includes whistles, pots and pans. Rooted in trance music of the Bazombo people, from where Congo meets Angola, Konono's songs are amped-up, distorted call-and-response chants with dizzying plinking patterns that just grow fiercer and more jubilant as they stretch out.

Cuba

In hard economic times, Cubans have learned to make a few resources go a long way, and on Pedro Luis Ferrer's "Rústico" (Escondida), the music uses a minimum of instruments: the bright-toned Cuban guitar called the tres, some hand percussion, three or four voices and perhaps a second guitar. Mr. Ferrer or his daughter Lena, who has a gorgeously forthright voice, sings lead vocals.

The music is as elegant and ambitious as it is austere. The self-invented genre Mr. Ferrer calls chagüisa draws on old rural Cuban styles and music from across Latin America, and the songs merge the naturalness of folk tunes with lyrics full of ideas, from a song that chides selfish husbands to one that sympathizes with an Andean cocaine grower but could also be a veiled protest about conditions in Cuba: "How will I live," he sings, "if my money is worthless?" The music has a gentle lilt and a steely core.

Ghana

James Brown's funk stirred up African music, stimulating all kinds of bands with scrubbing guitars and pushy horn sections. "Ghana Soundz: Afro-Beat, Funk and Fusion in 70's Ghana Volume 2" (Soundway) collects hybrids from Ghana, where the funk meshed with the modal lope of that nation's own highlife music and with the Afrobeat percolating nearby in Nigeria. With a few English lyrics amid the African languages, it's an album of sweaty, homegrown funk that's danceable from end to end.

Greece

Knife fights, hashish smoking, damnation and mourning are the stuff of rebetika, the songs that were once heard in tavernas in Greek port cities. The melodies are pithy and straightforward, though they draw on modes from across the Balkans and Middle East; the instrumentation is sparse, often just a bouzouki or a smaller lute called a baglama. But on the collection "Rebetika: The Rough Guide" (World Music Network), which includes recordings from the 1920's to the 80's, the voices - cocky and scarred, mournful and knowing - leap out with a fervor that's clear even on scratchy vintage tracks.

Haiti

In Haiti and France, Emeline Michel has long been known as a pop star and songwriter with a supple voice and a strong social conscience. Her eighth album, "Rasin Kreyol" (Times Square), places her hopes and worries about Haiti in sleek pop arrangements that stay rooted in rhythms from across that country. She merges modern funk with the easygoing compas and the galloping carnival beat of rara, so her earnest messages arrive in joyful grooves. And in songs like "Mon Reve" - with a voodoo drumbeat, a breathy Guinean-style flute and Ms. Michel's mostly wordless voice - her idealism rings out.

India

In both blues and raga, the notes between an instrument's frets are essential, so perhaps it was inevitable that an Indian musician would take up the slide guitar. On "3: Calcutta Slide-Guitar" (Riverboat), Debashish Bhattacharya plays three instruments he designed: a hollow-necked four-string slide ukulele, a 14-string slide guitar and a 22-string guitar with sympathetic strings. The structures and rhythms come from North and South India, and in classic raga style the music evolves from reflective melody to fast, flamboyant, tabla-driven improvisations. And every so often, there's a hint of deep Delta twang.

Iran

In Persian classical music, stately shared melodies open into flurries of passionate improvisation. The Masters of Persian Music are an alliance of four first-rate Persian musicians: Kayhan Kalhor on kemancheh (spike fiddle), Hussein Alizadeh on tar (lute), Mohammad Reza Shajarian on vocals, and his son, Homayoun Shajarian, on vocals and tombak (hand drum). The two-CD set "Faryad" (World Village) is a live concert so rapt that the applause at the end of each CD comes as a shock. Instrumental melodies alternate with mystical poetry sung in galvanic, ululating voices; hushed moments swell into almost shattering crescendos. The music crests, returns to dignified melody and crests again, as if formality can barely contain it.

Poland

Traditional Polish songs, with their cutting vocals and meshed fiddles, are the foundation of the Warsaw Village Band's repertory. But while their lineup is primarily acoustic - hand drums, hammered dulcimer, violins, cello - their sensibilities are modern. They hear dance-club drive and trancey echoes in the songs, and on "Uprooting" (World Village), they use recording-studio techniques to heighten the central drones and eerie percussive sounds in their songs. Hints of reggae rhythm and guests like a scratching disc jockey should further infuriate purists.

Portugal

The fado, once considered musically conservative and politically associated with Portugal's dictatorship until the 1970's, has been revitalized by a new generation of singers who have been drawn to the way fado ("fate") merges grand, tragic emotion with the delicate picking of the Portuguese guitarra. Young singers are holding on to fado's acoustic instrumentation while modestly stretching its parameters. "The Rough Guide to Fado" (World Music Network) juxtaposes current and past generations of fadistas, revealing more orchestration and less restraint among the elders. A young fado singer, Ana Moura, has a smoky alto that separates her from the many higher-voiced emulators of Amalia Rodriguez, the much-mourned queen of fado who died in 1999. Ms. Moura's songs hold mixed messages on "Guarda-me a Vida na Mão: Keep My Life in Your Hand" (World Village); though the lyrics are filled with fado's typical sufferings, the music often turns buoyant.

Réunion

The Indian Ocean island of Réunion, which lies between Madagascar and Mauritius and is an overseas department of France, has a Creole culture that mingles the bloodlines of French colonists, slaves from Africa and Madagascar, immigrants from India, China and Malaysia and assorted pirates and mutineers. On the album "Mapou" (World Music Network), Rene Lacaille's music reflects it all, as brisk six-beat rhythms carry his accordion, his quick-strummed ukulele, his jovially raspy voice and melodies with more than a hint of French chanson. While La Réunion is remote, Mr. Lacaille is cosmopolitan, tossing electric guitar, saxophone and Caribbean percussion into his arrangements. But there's still a rustic charm in his songs about fishing, cooking, rhythm and rum.

South Africa

When missionaries got to South Africa, they found local harmony-singing traditions that meshed magnificently with gospel hymns, creating a hybrid that has grown more South African over the generations. The Soweto Gospel Choir, 26 singers picked from churches around the Soweto township near Johannesburg, is both meticulously arranged and gutsy, from its hearty bass harmonies to soloists whose sharp-edged voices leap out of the choir. Its album "Voices From Heaven" (Shanachie) is geared for outsiders, with a few familiar English-language songs and an unnecessary pop finale. But most of the album uses just voices, or voices and percussion, in songs that are as dynamic as they are devout.

Turkey

In the 1960's, before world music had its own place in stores, it was packaged as sultry exotica like "How to Make Your Husband a Sultan: Belly Dance With Ozel Turkbas," which has been reissued on CD by Traditional Crossroads. Although Ms. Turkbas does sing on one track, the album is actually a well-recorded showcase for a Turkish gypsy clarinetist, Mustafa Kandirali, who bends notes all over the place and leads a very frisky Turkish band; one track, formerly an LP side, is an uninterrupted 17-minute suite. Ms. Turkbas's belly dance instructions, with photographs, are in the CD booklet.

Zimbabwe

Thomas Mapfumo was one of the pioneers of Zimbabwean rock, tranferring the patterns of thumb pianos to picked electric guitars. He was also a voice for the revolution that overthrew white minority rule in what was called Rhodesia and led to the authoritarian government of Robert Mugabe, which Mr. Mapfumo has gone on to criticize so sharply he has become an expatriate, living in Oregon. There's a calm authority in his voice; since the 1980's, there have also been thumb pianos in his band alongside the electric guitars and keyboard. His latest studio album, "Rise Up" (Calabash Music), is available only as a digital download from www.calabashmusic.com, and after a logy start it's a good introduction to his music, particularly if a downloader skips a few tracks. But there's a better one, also available for the first time exclusively as a download: "Afropop Presents Thomas Mapfumo Live," a vivid live recording (from the Manhattan club S.O.B.'s in 1991) that brings out every neatly interlocking part and the music's precise but ecstatic momentum.