Masterful performances of two ragas. Liquid, luminous, swinging.

From the Central Coast, afro music for rites and festivals, sharing with salsa drums like the cumaco (using the heel of the hand to vary pitch) and redondo, besides cow horns, car wheels, plates, sea shells.

The eighteenth-century poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai as celebrated nightly by waee faqirs, whose penetrating lutes and high whirling voices bridge musical and mystical experience.

Deeply moving violin-playing, unfolding and illuminating the emotional twists and turns of a single, hour-long raga.

The three main genres of Labë polyphony, all aiming for maximum emotional impact: vaj, lamenting life’s dramas; dashuri, love songs; historical epics.

Two heart-breaking songs and a clutch of rug-cutters from the Taurus mountains in southern Turkey. With accompaniment by Hayri Dev on the uçtelli, or lute. Terrific.

The out-of-this world, near-extinct tones and effects of copper plate, balanced on either thumb, with left-hand fingers playing ornamentally, the melody with the right, as accompaniment to singing in the Sanaan style, setting courtly poetry in classical Arabic.

Ritual music from Tamil country performed by nagasvaram oboes, tavil drums, talam castanets, and droning harmonium, or sruti petti (without a keyboard, powered by bellows).

Six deeply spiritual pieces from the Kinko School, developed in eighteenth century Japan by wandering zen monks for whom this flute music was a pathway to enlightenment.

The medieval story of the Heike clan — combining drama and heroics with Buddhist reflection on the ephemerality of existence — sung by Kakujo Iwasa and Kakuryu Saito, with lute accompaniment.