World Music 101

These days, world music is no longer an exotic spice reserved exclusively for globetrotting explorers; with our World Music 101 Essentials, you can set up your own international itinerary from the comfort of your laptop. You can almost smell the cocoa butter suntan lotion wafting on a Rio de Janeiro breeze in Astrud Gilberto, João Gilberto, and Stan Getz's classic samba, "The Girl From Ipanema." Bob Marley breaks through a veil of despair with a reassuring mantra, "Everything's gonna be all right," in the bittersweet reggae remembrance of his poverty-stricken youth, "No Woman, No Cry." And Johnny Clegg & Juluka, South Africa's first interracial stars, take township jive and weld it to a drum beat as big as the savannah in their "Scatterlings of Africa," inspiring Paul Simon on his journey to Graceland.

In Next Steps, we visit Andalusia, the Emerald Isle…and the Bay of Pigs.

Irish singer Eithne Ní Bhraonáin shortened her name to a much more pronounceable Enya and launched her career with the new age/Celtic sonic wash of "Orinoco Flow," its multitracked strings and stacked vocals producing a uniquely luxuriant, ethereal vibe. Three sisters from Cordoba banded together as Las Ketchup in 2002 and cut "Aserejé," a worldwide Spanglish dance hit that owes as much to the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" as it does to their native Flamenco music, which is woven throughout the tune. And nuevo trovo folksinger Silvio Rodriguez, relying on the expressiveness of his voice and nylon-string guitar without the benefit of any fancy production, recounts the story of the 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion — from the Cuban point of view — in "Playa Girón."

In Deep Cuts, we take you behind the scenes at a Gypsy wedding, China's ancient Imperial Palace, and more.

Pipa (Chinese lute) player Min Xiao-Fen, best known for her collaboration with Björk on Volta, transports us to a distant and ancient Eastern realm of lotus flowers and incense in "Sounds from the Chen and Sui Dynasties" from her album Spring, River, Flower, Moon, Night. Former Baaba Maal sideman Kaouding Cissoko plucks a very different sort of string — this one on the African harp/lute known as a kora — on his fusion of Latin jazz and Senegalese folk traditions in "Ditax Kora." And Gypsy clarinetist Ivo Papasov and singer Yîldîz Ibrahimova invite us behind the scenes at a wedding on the Greek-Bulgarian border in their Romany-meets-Klezmer nuptial tune "The Contest."

Though the term world music has been around for a mere 20 years (its official birth was June 29, 1987, over dinner at a London restaurant), the music itself has been part of our listening experience since the days of Edison's wax cylinder. From the gently swaying sambas of Rio de Janeiro's beaches to the otherworldly whirr of Tuvan throat singing, world music is no longer the exclusive domain of those hardy pioneers who lugged recorders into backwater villages and remote huts in search of exotic culture. Travel across the globe with the click of a mouse, and indulge your senses with sounds and textures that can set your pulse racing or chill you out, depending on your desires. Who cares if you can't sing along? A whole world's worth of music is hanging here like ripe fruit, just waiting to be plucked.