“The highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment”. Pythagoras

Her passport includes stamps from Southern India, Australia, Morocco, Spain, and Russia just to name a few, but this past weekend Donna D’Cruz’s ears traveled to twelve different countries while her feet stayed in one.  Music is the clue, and the 9^th annual globalFEST is the answer to the question you may be harboring about how this musical excursion was possible. New York City's Webster Hall was Donna’s international airport. With a single ticket, this festival brought Donna and others to regions like southern Italy, northern China, urban Haiti, and rural Cape Verde.

This is not just any ordinary joyous music celebratory event, globalFest serves two purposes: to expose a planet’s worth of electric, rich sounds and styles to a growing number of fans; to serve as a “shopping mall” for art curators whom are in town. GlobalFEST presents a wide range of artists and styles from across the world, whom are then considered as applicants in the North American touring circuit. Every year is a new act, no band or solo artist performs at globalFest twice.

This is the biggest world-music themed showcase is a three-stage, twelve act festival in the East Village.

Every January the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference is brought to New York where artists perform to concert bookers in hope of getting bigger and better gigs in the year to come.

The acts who performed were:

BélO: a singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose vision interweaves the Afro-Caribbean depths of Haitian tradition with a progressive voice for social and political transformation.

Canzoniere Grencanico Salentino: a group that draws on the unique sound and heritage found on Salento, Italy’s isolated peninsula. Canzoniere use lush vocals, percussion, recorder, accordion, and evocative dance to transport listeners to that good ol' state of altered consciousness and musical release.

Debo band: a Boston based group with a brassy interpretation of classic Ethiopian funk and sounds of rock psychedelica.

Diogo Nogueira: recently received a Latin Grammy nomination as best newcomer, he then became a samba sensation and won “his” Grammy.

M.A.K.U. Sound System: an Afro-Colombian punk and folkloric funk; a sound of bold pan-Latin, while adding horns and vocals to roaring guitars and hard-hitting Latin beats.

Mayra Andrade: her musical sound is drawn from Brazilian and French songs, as well as African sounds to create music that engages jazz, acoustic, and chanson traditions.

The Silk Road Ensemble: they use their talents to unite cultures and build connections through their instrumental variety. Using instruments such as the viola, table, violin, percussion, gaita, pipa, sheng, cello and bass makes this band culturally diverse in every harmonic beat.

SMOD: they broke into new musical territory with a distinct roots-rap hybrid sound that incorporates crunchy organic sounds, strong flow and Afro-centric beats.

The Gloaming: a band who jam with a variety of instruments, together bring a finely balanced sound, a common spirit and a strident power that leaps from a pianist, fiddler, guitarist, and vocalist.

Wang Li: growing up playing jaw harp, he later found his way to playing bass in Western-influenced bands.The jaw harp allows Li to evoke an interior world rich with echoes of childhood and moving listeners from the inner turmoil to silence.

Yemen Blues: is a raw yet refined group with nine eclectic musicians who bang on olive cans, hit elusive microtones, and sing in invented languages.

Zaz: is a female singer whose songs sweep together all her worldly influences from Latin vibes to Middle Eastern beats, all linked by her husky, rich voice and quirky, grooving interpretive sensibility.

After a voyage across this musical platform Donna D’Cruz’s initial reaction was that this night was, “mind-bending, and heart-racing”. “globalFest is an audacious festival filled with surprises, great beauty, and always sublime, transcental sounds” she said.  Donna continues by saying that the bands she saw were brilliant and brave. “I loved the variety of the artists and deeply admire Bill Bragin, Isabel Soffer and the globalFEST team for an incredible event”.

The globalFEST Fund helps support the presence of international music in diverse communities in the United States. The grants attained by these acts will provide continued support to globalFEST artists by enabling them to perform in new markets and to develop new audiences in the U.S. without regard to the region or size of market.

Written by: Ariel Hofher