Lo’Jo is 30 years old, which in world music terms is kind of like the Rolling Stones turning 50 (as they did this year). True, Lo’Jo is perhaps a little less known than the Stones, but for fans of poetically minded global fusion cooperatives, Lo’Jo helped create the mould.

The band celebrates its three decades with a new album, Cinéma el Mundo (World Village), released Oct. 9. To accompany some of the music, here’s a Lo’Jo cheat sheet. Just in case you want to spread the Lo'Jo word so that the band, too, will have the household word cachet of, say, the Stones.

The sound:

French chanson and musette, dub reggae, African, Arabic, played on violin, basses, drummer and the human voice, including those of Algerian sisters Yamina and Nadia Nid El Mourid.

The origins:

The band was formed by singer-songwriter Denis Péan and violinist Richard Bourreau, who met at music school in Angers, France, a lovely spot where the Loire meets the Maine River. The band lives and records in a farmhouse there, called La Fontaine du Mont (The Fountain on the Mount). It’s all rolling hills and grape vines and gently flowing rivers. (We’re happy for them. No, really, we are.)

?The cool guests on the new album:

Vincent Ségal, members of Tinariwen, Robert Wyatt.

The stories the album tells:

“A woman called Lila who leaves before dawn, the mosques that form a string of pearls around the neck of Algiers, two rusted hulks in the port of Buenos Aires, a blue titmouse in an instant of pure air, dragons sliding over roofs above the market in Vientiane, dreadlocks in an Occitan passageway, the flow of people escorted through a neighbourhood of flies by a proud fanfare of stars.” (Andy Morgan wrote that, and we couldn’t put it any better.)

One of many claims to fame:

Lo'Jo helped create the first Festival in the Desert, which in turn made bands including the now legendary Tinariwen famous.

What people say about Lo’Jo:

"Probably one of the best live bands in the world right now." – The Independent

“The veteran troubadours of world fusion celebrate their 30th anniversary with a typically mercurial creation, brimming with musical styles and poetic evocations of place and mood.” – The Observer

“Lo’Jo work because none of their songs are formulaic, yet there’s no self-conscious striving to make each one different either." – Songlines

"Their carnevalesque, funky French ways are always a treat. Three decades in, still going strong." – CBC World Music