A popular Pakistani musician and actor, Atif Aslam, is being hailed worldwide after he stopped a live performance on Saturday night to rescue a female fan who was allegedly being sexually harassed by a group of men at the concert.

Videos of the incident shot by concertgoers are circulating online. Aslam stops his musicians mid-song, and in a mix of Urdu and English, begins berating the alleged harassers, who seem to be right in front of the stage. “Wait a second,” the singer says angrily. “Have you ever seen a girl? Your mother or sister could be here, too, huh?”

He then instructs security to pull the young woman up onto the stage with him, saying: “I’m going to rescue her.”

Many fans are heard cheering the singer’s actions, chanting: “Atif! Atif! Atif!” Aslam goes on to address the attackers directly again, saying: “Act like a human being.”

The show, in which Aslam was co-billed with Sufi singing legend Abida Parveen, took place at the Institute of Business Administration, a highly ranked university in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. The show was organized by MUNIK, the school’s Model United Nations.

Aslam is a household name in Pakistan and is well-known throughout the South Asian subcontinent. His video for the wildly popular Coke Studios Pakistan series, a tribute to the Sufi singers The Sabri Brothers, has been viewed on YouTube more than 56 million times. He made his acting debut in the 2011 film Bol — whose plot involves a family with a transgender daughter and which broke box-office records in Pakistan.

Yesterday, the newspaper The Daily Pakistan reported in the aftermath of Saturday’s show that “dozens of girls were molested and sexually harassed at the venue,” and citing an anonymous tipster, charged that students at the university who helped organize the show sold thousands of fake tickets to the performance, leading to chaos and lack of security.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn posted a number of social media accounts of what happened. One female concertgoer named Mahnoor Alamgir wrote on Facebook: “Not a single girl escaped harassment unless she was with a male friend or husband…I’m utterly disgusted right now.”

Another woman in the audience named Yusra Habib wrote on Facebook: “You know something is terribly problematic when a singer has to stop in between his performance, spot harassment from within a massive crowd and ask his team to ‘rescue the girl.’ You know its [sic] even more uncomfortable when three more girls have to be lifted on stage and taken away safely. It only goes on to prove that no matter how butt-hurt our awaam [people] gets over this reverse-sexism and so called misogyny at public events, it is what we as a crowd need the most.”

In many of the South Asian news accounts of this incident, the harassment and molestation of women is referred to by a common regional euphemism: “eve-teasing.”

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The world music festival globalFEST, held every year in New York, is regarded as a snapshot of rising acts in international music. It’s also quite a scene: Music industry professionals make up a large portion of the crowd, and they’re all there to scope out which acts from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe and beyond might just be hot in the next couple of years.

NPR Music’s Anastasia Tsioulcas was at the festival Sunday, and she joined NPR’s Steve Inskeep for a wide-ranging conversation about the artists she saw, the history of the event and what world music means in the current political moment. Hear their full conversation at the audio link and read on for an edited transcript.

Steve Inskeep: So who is this person we’re listening to?

Anastasia Tsioulcas: This is a singer from Venezuela named Betsayda Machado and her band, which is called La Parranda El Clavo. There’s a lot of African sound in her music, a lot of textures, a lot of rhythms. She comes from a community of descendants of former slaves, and they have managed, in their tiny town of El Clavo, to hold on to their African traditions and their music. And now here they are, touring the world.

So we’re talking here not just about musical acts from different places, but maybe a single act that draws on music from different places. What is this festival like? Where is it, exactly, and who shows up?

This is in New York City every January. It is one night at a club called Webster Hall — three floors, three different mini-venues, all in the same building. So you’ve got a couple thousand people running up and down the stairs all night to hear all of these acts and weigh in. There’s a lot of civilians, but there’s a significant chunk of the audience who are music industry people — club bookers and artist managers and labels — and they’re chasing the next hot thing.

Do you mean literally running up and down the stairs? Like, are your knees sore now?

Oh yeah. There’s fully training, granola bars, gel packs to get through the evening.

Where did this festival come from?

It was founded back in 2003 by a trio of very influential bookers in New York City. They saw in the post-9/11 era a real opportunity — and real reason — to create a gateway for the music community to book and tour international artists, because it became very hard in those years for those artists to get visas to perform in the United States. The bookers thought they could create something as a reaction to what they perceived as increasing xenophobia in the United States.

So this has always been somewhat political in nature. Are there any acts that seem particularly timely — that speak to our current moment?

There are certainly always artists that want to talk about the politics of their region or of their background. To me, one of the most resonant acts this year was a band from Cuba called Septeto Santiaguero.

This is a big dance band from this city on the southeastern tip of the island called Santiago de Cuba. There’s nothing political about their music — this is music to party to — but right now, it feels very hard, when we’re just at the brink of a shift in administrations in the United States and potentially a huge shift in policy towards Cuba. You know, this openness that we’ve had in the past several years — who knows what’s going to happen next.

And we should emphasize we do not know what policy President-elect Trump might follow toward Cuba, but he has spoken about a conflict between globalism and nationalism. Where does a music event called globalFEST fit into that discussion?

Well, it’s interesting because we can look at this in terms of strictly music. You know, a lot of the artists who appear there are very much artists of 2017. You’re hearing hip-hop, you’re hearing punk, you’re hearing R&B. You’re hearing all these things that make music go right now — plus tradition: acoustic instruments and very ancient ideas and modes and rhythms melded together.

But also, I think we’re going to see the same kind of concerns that the founders of this festival were thinking about back in the early 2000s: Is it going to be harder for artists coming from Africa or South Asia or the Middle East to get a toehold in the United States in the years to come? Is this going to be a place where people are going to be open to sounds from around the world, or are they really going to be very settled in music from here?

Were there American artists at globalFEST?

There always are. It’s really interesting to me — in the past several years, the bookers of globalFEST have tried to emphasize American regional music, so, for example, there was a Gullah group from South Carolina. But there were also musicians who draw on their own ethnic backgrounds and traditions — one of those was an artist who was born and raised in Sudan named Alsarah, but, go figure — she’s in Brooklyn now. And she creates a kind of music that she likes to call “Sudanese-Nubian retro-pop.”

OK, so two different cultures of Africa being drawn on from Brooklyn.

She is a Sudanese artist, so she sings in Arabic, and of course there’s the sort of pan-Arabic musical tradition — but also a very sub-Saharan-influenced style that makes it really Nubian and really very much of black Africa.

Are we hearing in music a bit of a contradiction here? There are a lot of people in this country who are concerned about America’s relation with the wider world, but we’re, in effect, the global nation that has drawn people from everywhere already.

Yeah, absolutely. How do you honor both of those instincts musically? How do you preserve and nurture regional American traditions that came through the soil — and also, for artists who really are coming from everywhere and call America their home, how do you be of this place, and of this time right now, and also honor the place that your ancestors came from or that you’ve come from?

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Music suffered heavy losses in 2016, a year like no other in recent memory. We bid unexpected farewells to the very brightest stars — David Bowie and Prince — but we also lost masters from every corner of the music world, from classical composers and jazz greats to world music superstars, soul singers, country giants, prog-rock pioneers and record producers. They left us with unforgettable sounds and compelling stories. Hear their music and explore their legacies here.

(Credits: Tom Huizenga, producer; Mark Mobley, editor; Brittany Mayes, designer)

Prince

June 7, 1958 — April 21, 2016

We may never see another total talent like Prince again. He was the product of terrific genes, music education and a post-Beatles, post-Hendrix studio audacity. As a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, guitar shredder, producer, philanthropist and music business innovator, he knew few creative limits. And his transcendently erotic, genre-spanning music made us all believe freaks ran the universe.—Jason King

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David Bowie

Jan. 8, 1947 — Jan. 10, 2016

David Bowie was an open channel through whom music changed in myriad ways. The patron saint of freaks and rebels, a champion of the marginalized, Bowie was a total artist who didn’t dabble but triumph in fashion, theater and film. He challenged himself and us up to and through his final masterpiece, Blackstar.—Ann Powers

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Pierre Boulez

March 26, 1925 — Jan. 5, 2016

Once an enfant terrible who suggested blowing up opera houses, the French composer created complex, fantastically colorful and surprisingly sensual music with new acoustic and electronic sounds. As a first-tier conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic, he eventually embraced most of the canon, performing familiar works with analytical clarity.—Tom Huizenga

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Maurice White

Dec. 19, 1941 — Feb. 4, 2016

Memphis-born musical visionary Maurice White did humanity a major favor by founding 1970s superstar act Earth, Wind & Fire — which brimmed with talent like bassist Verdine White, falsetto singer Philip Bailey and tenor White himself. Delivering exuberantly funky R&B joints like “Sing a Song” and “September,” EWF redefined the soul band as the ultimate sensual rhythm machine.—Jason King

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Leonard Cohen

Sept. 21, 1934 — Nov. 7, 2016

The most elegant poet and philosopher of the rock era was also one of its most sensual and funniest. If “Hallelujah” was his signature hymn, his hundreds of other songs teemed with as much divinity, grounded in erotic detail and a deep appreciation of human vulnerability. He also looked great in a suit.—Ann Powers

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Juan Gabriel

Jan. 7, 1950 — Aug. 28, 2016

Mourned in his native Mexico as a national hero, he told stories that resonated with Latin music fans from the tip of South America to North America. He was iconic because of his legendary insistence on going his own way. —Felix Contreras

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Merle Haggard

April 6, 1937 — April 6, 2016

The hardscrabble poetry of his songs spoke of plain truths and lessons learned, and was set to music both rowdy and reflective. His evocative storytelling left a long shadow across country music and picked up fans as disparate as Johnny Cash and The Grateful Dead.—Felix Contreras

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Glenn Frey

Nov. 6, 1948 — Jan. 18, 2016

Mixing the pop smoothness with the rock grit, Frey co-wrote and sang many of The Eagles’ biggest hits, including “Take It Easy,” “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Heartache Tonight.” Between the band’s initial 1980 breakup and its first reunion in 1994, Frey became a solo star — with hits such as “The Heat Is On” and “Smuggler’s Blues” — and launched an acting career.—Stephen Thompson

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Sharon Jones

May 4, 1956 — Nov. 18, 2016

A music business afterthought for much of her life, the funky and ingratiating Brooklyn soul singer broke out in the last 20 years to become one of the most electrifying performers in the business. With the aid of her band The Dap-Kings, Jones was an era-straddling thriller whose appeal crossed generations.—Stephen Thompson

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Ralph Stanley

Feb. 25, 1927 — June 23, 2016

A high tenor, banjo player and titan of American mountain music, he and his brother Carter Stanley were bluegrass originators. Late in his career, he sang an unforgettable “O Death” in O Brother, Where Art Thou? While the lyrics asked that he be spared, the authority and quiet intensity of his voice demanded Death acquiesce for many years.—Mark Mobley

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Esma Redžepova

Aug. 8, 1943 — Dec. 11, 2016

She was the voice of a people, the Roma (historically known as Gypsies). This Macedonian singer, educator and humanitarian was one of the first international stars to sing in the Romany language. She gained particular fame she didn’t seek when a song of hers was licensed for the opening of Borat. But her legacy continues through hundreds of recordings and dozens of children she fostered.—Mark Mobley

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Papa Wemba

June 14, 1949 — April 24, 2016

The Congolese superstar with the high, happy, easygoing voice was influential in mixing African and Western pop styles, and reached an international audience through the world music movement of the ’80s and ’90s. His dapper fashion gave rise to a wave of young men known as sapeurs — the Society of Atmosphere-setters and Elegant People.—Mark Mobley

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Pulse nightclub shooting

June 12, 2016

Ghost Ship warehouse fire

Dec. 2, 2016

Dozens of people died this year in Orlando and Oakland doing one of the things they enjoyed most — dancing among family, friends and strangers. That they would die so young in places problems shouldn’t matter made a difficult year even tougher. The music won’t stop, but neither will the memories, vigilance and love.—Mark Mobley

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Jane Little

Feb. 2, 1929 — May 15, 2016

For more than 71 years she played double bass in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a span that included the visionary tenure of music director Robert Shaw. At 87 years old, during a concert, she collapsed while playing her instrument, which was a foot taller than she was. The song on her music stand? “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”—Mark Mobley

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Mose Allison

Nov. 11, 1927 — Nov. 15, 2016

In an age when most pop moved away from jazz, Mose Allison had the ears of rock stars, including The Who, The Clash and Elvis Costello. Yet he never lost a jazz audience devoted to his quietly sophisticated playing, witty writing and charmingly glancing, bluesy singing.—Mark Mobley

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Gato Barbieri

Nov. 28, 1932 — April 2, 2016

Hard to imagine going from avant-garde to Last Tango in Paris to smooth jazz in a single, eventful career, but he did it all with style and grace. Argentina’s gift to the tenor sax made amazing records and championed Latin folk before it was cool. —Felix Contreras

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Paul Bley

Nov. 10, 1932 — Jan. 3, 2016

Here’s one measure of Paul Bley‘s talent: The supporting musicians on his debut recording were Charles Mingus and Art Blakey. Bley in turn helped launch the careers of Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. Bley could hear all the directions music could take, out into the realms of what came to be called “free jazz” — a ’60s movement in which he was a central figure.—Tom Cole

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Guy Clark

Nov. 6, 1941 — May 17, 2016

Lyle Lovett put it well at a Nashville memorial for this Texas troubadour: “Guy Clark was my friend before I ever met him.” So many songwriters learned by listening to his pristine, humble, gruffly sung tunes. Echoing through three generations of country and Americana stars, Clark shaped the way they philosophize about the plain stuff of life.—Ann Powers

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Tony Conrad

March 7, 1940 — April 9, 2016

Tony Conrad wasn’t so much a violinist but a mediator between worlds. Whether jamming with Faust and the Theatre of Eternal Music in the ’70s, or later with Jim O’Rourke and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, he always understood the essential being of sound as one continuous note.—Lars Gotrich

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Peter Maxwell Davies

Sept. 8, 1934 — March 14, 2016

Called the “harlequin of British music,” the artistically restless composer was inspired by modernists like Pierre Boulez, ancient English choral traditions and eventually the austere landscape of his beloved Orkney Islands. He left a genre-spanning trove of works running from the expressionistic to the serene and even ceremonial, as in 2004 he became Master of the Queen’s Music.—Tom Huizenga

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Keith Emerson

Nov. 2, 1944 — ca. March 11, 2016

The first time I saw Keith Emerson, it was 1971, and he was standing on top of his Hammond L-100 thrusting daggers into the keys. He was a madman making a wild mix of classical and rock in Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s wistful tales of prophets and “the fate of all Mankind.”—Bob Boilen

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Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Dec. 6, 1929 — March 5, 2016

Too many candy-coated Mozart performances in the 1950s forced the Austrian cellist to create and conduct his own orchestra — Concentus Musicus Wien. From that moment, Harnoncourt became a dominant force in the early music movement, championing Monteverdi and Bach. Eventually, with the world’s great orchestras at his command, he presided over repertoire from Beethoven to Gershwin.—Tom Huizenga

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Bobby Hutcherson

Jan. 27, 1941 — Aug. 15, 2016

Forget the fact that he had few peers on his instrument and instead consider his intense musicality and faultless swing. Then you have essentially crystallized his entire career, especially his impressive Blue Note output.—Felix Contreras

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Paul Kantner

March 17, 1941 — Jan. 28, 2016

San Francisco music journalist Joel Selvin called Paul Kantner “the soul” of Jefferson Airplane, the “contrarian” who “kept everything off balance.” Kantner co-founded the band and co-wrote songs including “Wooden Ships.” There was a strong anti-authoritarian strain that ran through his music and his life. As Selvin put it, “He never bought the Mercedes and moved to the suburbs.” Kantner stayed in the city whose sound he helped define.—Tom Cole

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Greg Lake

Nov. 10, 1947 — Dec. 7, 2016

Guitar Svengali Robert Fripp got attention as mastermind of the first King Crimson, and keyboard Dumbledore Keith Emerson stole the show in Emerson, Lake and Palmer. But Greg Lake was the voice that went from quietly melodious to full-throated on “In the Court of the Crimson King.” He wrote “Lucky Man,” a standout on ELP’s debut, at just 12 years old, and created the beautiful and enduring “I Believe in Father Christmas.”—Tom Cole

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Joe Ligon

Oct. 11, 1936 — Dec. 11, 2016

The Mighty Clouds of Joy were led by a voice of thunder. Joe Ligon was a stalwart of the hard gospel style who took some flak from the faithful for performing on Soul Train, but also managed to score a disco hit, delivering a message of salvation where it wasn’t often heard.—Mark Mobley

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Neville Marriner

April 15, 1924 — Oct. 2, 2016

The widely admired English conductor introduced Mozart to untold millions when he led the ensemble he founded, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, for the Oscar-winning movie Amadeus. Over five decades he made hundreds of sturdy recordings of repertoire from Vivaldi to Bartok, fronting orchestras in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Stuttgart.—Tom Huizenga

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George Martin

Jan. 3, 1926 — March 8, 2016

As producer and arranger and with The Beatles, George Martin changed what anyone thought was possible in rock music. “George Martin made us what we were in the studio,” John Lennon said. “He helped us develop a language to talk to other musicians.”—Bob Boilen

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Scotty Moore

Dec. 27, 1931 — June 28, 2016

Scotty Moore wanted to be a jazz guitarist but became one of the most revered of all rock ‘n’ roll sidemen. He was working at Sun Studio in Memphis when owner Sam Phillips asked him to audition an unknown named Elvis. Moore’s crisp fills and biting solos on “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock” and “Heartbreak Hotel” have become parts of history.—Tom Cole

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Marni Nixon

Feb. 22, 1930 — July 24, 2016

Eliza Doolittle in London, Anna in Siam, Maria on Manhattan’s West Side — they had different famous faces onscreen but sang with the same voice. Marni Nixon had an unparalleled career as a Hollywood “ghost singer,” but also left a distinguished legacy of stage and recording work, especially in contemporary classical music.—Mark Mobley

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Russell Oberlin

Oct. 11, 1928 — Nov. 25, 2016

The pioneering countertenor was a leading force in the American early music movement of the 1950s and possessed a singularly identifiable voice. Rather than using falsetto to sing in the alto range, Oberlin’s voice settled naturally high, affording him a full-bodied tone devoid of the hooty quality of many countertenors.—Tom Huizenga

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Pauline Oliveros

May 30, 1932 — Nov. 24, 2016

Known for her aesthetic called “deep listening,” Oliveros thought nothing of dropping into a vacant cistern with her accordion to record an album. The Texas-born composer embraced improvisation, music of American Indians and experimented early with electronics, deconstructing Puccini in Bye Bye Butterfly, which doubled as a bold statement on the lack of women composers.—Tom Huizenga

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Phife Dawg

Nov. 20, 1970 — Mar. 22, 2016

Can’t really imagine alt-hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest without Malik Taylor aka Phife Dawg aka Phife aka the Five Foot Assassin. Trini-blooded Phife delivered high tenor rhymes that acted as counterpoint to Q-Tip’s sagacious flow. Unafraid to wax political, Phife also helped afford the Native Tongues pioneers an affable street cred. Never the flashiest MC, he remains a timeless icon of post 90s East Coast hip-hop.—Jason King

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Prince Buster

May 24, 1938 — Sept. 8, 2016

Young boxer Cecil Bustamente Campbell became a pioneer of ska and rocksteady and one of the first Jamaican musicians to break worldwide. As famous as he was in the ’60s thanks to songs like “Al Capone” and “Madness is Gladness,” he had a second wave of fame in the ’70s and ’80s as groups like The Specials and Madness seized upon his music.—Mark Mobley

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Einojuhani Rautavaara

Oct. 9, 1928 — July 27, 2016

The eclectic Finn, who said his brief stint in Manhattan taught him more than his teachers, was a musical experimenter. Blessed by his revered predecessor Jean Sibelius, Rautavaara dabbled in atonal techniques, neoclassical elegance, elements of American jazz — even recording birdcalls for his popular Cantus arcticus. His later mystic phase attracted a new contingent of admirers.—Tom Huizenga

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Leon Russell

April 2, 1942 — Nov. 13, 2016

A musician’s musician, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer worked with the greats — Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, George Harrison and countless others — in a career that spanned 60 years. Though Russell‘s biggest hits came in the early ’70s, he enjoyed a major comeback in 2010 through a hit album with Elton John, whose own work he’d helped inspire.—Stephen Thompson

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Amjad Sabri

Dec. 23, 1976 — June 22, 2016

At just 45, in the prime of his life and career, the clarion-voiced Sabri was gunned down while making his way to a TV performance during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for killing this especially accomplished and promising member of a devout and revered musical family devoted to an ancient, honorable and tolerant tradition.—Mark Mobley

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Jean Shepard

Nov. 21, 1933 — Sept. 25, 2016

There’d be no Kacey Musgraves — maybe even no Loretta Lynn — without Jean Shepard. A pioneer who sang of female independence starting in the 1950s, she was the first woman to reach a half century as a Grand Old Opry member and championed traditional country until the end of her long, inspiring life.—Ann Powers

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Sam Spence

March 29, 1927 — Feb. 6, 2016

In 1966, the ascendant NFL took on a thrilling new sound, as Sam Spence began scoring NFL Films highlights with orchestral music fit for swinging spy films and spaghetti westerns. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and “Fly, Eagles Fly” sound quaint next to the modern onslaughts of “The Over the Hill Gang,” “Wild Bunch” and “The Pony Soldiers.”—Mark Mobley

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Elizabeth Swados

Feb. 5, 1951 — Jan. 5, 2016

Coming to Broadway directly between West Side Story and Rent, Elizabeth Swados‘s Runaways had a similarly galvanizing run and even younger cast. After interviewing actual runaways, Swados wrote the music, lyrics, and book, choreographed and directed the celebrated show. She was also a novelist, children’s book author, memoirist and inspiration to countless younger theater artists.—Mark Mobley

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Rod Temperton

Oct. 9, 1949 — ca. Oct. 5, 2016

Pop’s British Invasion remained an occupying force — even if you didn’t know that “Thriller,” “Rock With You,” “Off the Wall,” “Boogie Nights,” “The Groove Line” and “Always and Forever” were written by one self-effacing Englishman who shunned celebrity while making peerless music.—Mark Mobley

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Toots Thielemans

April 29, 1922 — Aug. 22, 2016

Toots Thielemans heard a Louis Armstrong record and went from studying mathematics in his native Belgium to playing jazz on the most unlikely instrument: the harmonica. And what’s even more unlikely, given how hard he blew, is that he suffered from asthma all his life. He was a favorite sideman of Quincy Jones, who called him “my Uncle Bebop.” Thielemans was also a good guitarist who developed a technique of whistling while he played.—Tom Cole

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Rudy Van Gelder

Nov. 2, 1924 — Aug. 25, 2016

Rudy Van Gelder defined the sound of jazz, from the late ’50s into the 21st century, as the man on the other side of the studio glass. He started recording his high school friends in his parents’ living room and went on to steer more than 20,000 recordings by the likes of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver. Van Gelder felt that each musician’s contributions should be heard clearly — his gift to them and us.—Tom Cole

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Nana Vasconcelos

Aug. 2, 1944 — March 9, 2016

Rhythm was just one of his gifts. Beautiful melodies would often come soaring from his voice, from his earliest days with the chill jazz label ECM to big stadiums with Pat Metheny.—Felix Contreras

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Alan Vega

June 23, 1938 — July 16, 2016

There was a terrifying side to an Alan Vega performance but there was also a wink of humor. He was half of an electric minimalist punk duo called Suicide with partner Martin Rev. They made confrontational art in a band not well-loved but ultimately memorable and important.—Bob Boilen

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Bernie Worrell

Apr. 14, 1944 — June 24, 2016

Hugely influential funk and rock keyboard player best known as the top and bottom of Parliament-Funkadelic. His lumbering, fuzzed-out bass lines and high, keening solos gave George Clinton’s band galactic power and kicked Talking Heads into a higher gear. In a band or as a solo artist, he made synths sing and dance.—Mark Mobley

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Imagine that an important American musical city, one at a crossroads of commerce and culture (say, Memphis), was unknown to much of the world. Bobo Dioulasso in Upper Volta, the name Burkina Faso went by during the French colonial period, could be described in this way. French author and producer Florent Mazzoleni has spent years visiting that city, literally going door to door to collect vinyl records that rarely circulated beyond the country’s borders.

The music Mazzoleni collected is described as “Bobo Yéyé.” Bobo refers to its city of origin. Yéyé is how French-speaking people in the 1960s and ’70s talked about the era’s rock n roll, especially The Beatles with their immortal refrain, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Mazzoleni’s work has culminated in a box set, which he titled Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta. “Belle Époque” means “a beautiful era.“

Among the groups featured in the box set is Volta Jazz, one of the most prominent bands of this time. You can hear a strong Afro-Cuban influence in their music, because Latin music was huge in West Africa in the ’60s. Bobo was a market center and an army town, booming, full of nightclubs and bands that catered to locals, soldiers and visitors alike. All sorts of cultures, including rock and roll, collided merrily in this hopeful milieu.

The bands featured in this box set were all processing the excitement, complexity and upheaval of Upper Volta’s recent independence from France. Radio was introducing new sounds, and musicians and fans were keen to fuse their local identity with international trends. In the song “De Nwolo,” Tidiane Coulibaly and his band Dafra Star incorporate the region’s most prominent instrument, the wooden xylophone known as the balafon, into electric guitar pop.

Unfortunately, this rich cultural moment was crushed after 1984, when a new military leader, Thomas Sankara, imposed a curfew in the country’s cities and decreed that musicians could no longer charge money for their concerts. This box set gives us 41 tracks and over 100 black and white photographs depicting stylish musicians and their fans, African mods and urban warriors, young people with high hopes and big dreams. Bobo Yéyé lets us savor the seductive creativity and optimism of a lost world, a belle époque indeed.

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Marcel Khalife is a Lebanese composer, singer and innovator on his instrument, the lute-like oud. Khalife performed his first concerts amid the rubble of bombed-out buildings in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war. Now, 40 years later, he is one of the most prolific figures in Arabic music. Khalife’s new album, Andalusia Of Love, combines classical, jazz and folk idioms with poetry to create a provocative new work.

Khalife sings with a kind of wistful optimism. He has lived and created amid some of the most terrible and intractable conflicts of our time, yet he continues to dream of peace and reconciliation. In this suite of 14 seamlessly linked pieces, Khalife returns to a touchstone of that dream: Andalusia.

Andalusia is a region in the southern parts of Spain and Portugal, where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together for centuries during medieval times. For Khalife, that history is an enduring reminder that peaceful cohabitation is possible for people of these faiths. Khalife himself is a Christian, but throughout his career, he has set to music the words of a Muslim writer, the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. On this album, the composer and poet conjure a world they can only imagine, but that burns within them like the memory of a first love.

Khalife performs this suite with his sons, Rami and Bachar, on piano and percussion, and Gilbert Yammine on the jangling, ethereal string instrument called the qanun. Their instrumental textures animate the yearning, nostalgic sentiments in Darwish’s poetry.

This brooding, beautiful, urgent music may call you to spend an hour in a world where peace is not a dream, but a hard-earned reality.

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Ziggy Marley is true music royalty. On KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, the seven-time Grammy-winning reggae musician recently played a career-spanning set of music from his incredible catalog — including the hopeful “Start It Up” from his new self-titled album.

SET LIST

• “Start It Up”

Photo by Dustin Downing/KCRW.

Watch Ziggy Marley’s full Morning Becomes Eclectic performance at KCRW.com.

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It was just two years ago that Mauritanian vocalist Noura Mint Seymali hit the international scene — but now, it’s hard to imagine the scope of African music without her. The singer and her band blow listeners away with giddily woozy and dreamlike vocals; blistering guitar played by her husband, Jeiche Ould Chighaly; and the grounding elements of Ousmane Touré’s bass and Matthew Tinari’s drums.

Now, Seymali is about to release her second internationally available album, Arbina. She’s kicking things off with a video — for her song “Na Sane” — that gives audiences abroad a little glimpse of her native land, which is wedged between the Berber and Arab countries of northwestern Africa and the sub-Saharan south. The desert stretches over the vast majority of Mauritania’s territory and is capped by the Richat Structure, a famous “bull’s-eye” — also known as the “Eye of the Sahara” — that astronauts can see from space. Just over 4 million people live in this country that is nearly twice as big as Texas. It’s a severe and unforgiving landscape, but one that possesses a very particular kind of melancholy beauty.

Director Loïc Hoquet and producer-drummer Tinari decided to shoot the video for “Na Sane” on a road trip through Mauritania. They rented a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck and a black Mercedes taxi and set off on the road that links Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott, with its second-largest city, Nouadhibou (population roughly 118,000), near the border of Western Sahara territory.

The scenes from the road are intercut with glimpses of a party — and everyone in the video is a relative or friend of Seymali and Chighaly. As Tinari wrote in an email, “Essentially, we just threw an impromptu family barbecue. One of the dancers is Noura’s brother Baba; some of the younger boys are nephews of Jeiche. The girl dancer is a friend from the neighborhood. It was a family affair!”

Part of the shoot also took place at a ridge that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean — yes, this is still Mauritania. The band plays at Cap Blanc, which used to be known as the “largest ship graveyard in the world.” It’s where owners paid bribes to illegally abandon their old vessels and left them to rot in the Cap Blanc harbor. Tinari says, “There has been a recent U.N. project to dismantle the decaying ships, and many of them are no longer there.” Still, one can imagine those ghostly shipping boats shimmering in the waters behind the band.

This Mauritanian sojourn is a perfect fit for Seymali, considering how deeply rooted she is in her home culture. Both she and her husband are Moorish griots; in west Africa, griots are a community’s storytellers, historians, poets — and musicians. Seymali comes from a long line of griots, in fact; her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was a famous Mauritanian singer.

Fittingly, then, Seymali calls upon tradition even as she infuses her music with psychedelia; her lyrics, too, intertwine those ideas of heritage and innovation. “Na Sane” begins with two traditional lines, followed by a line penned in honor of Chighaly’s older brother Lamar (also a talented guitarist) by Seymali’s late father-in-law, the musician Youba El Moctar Chighaly, before concluding with words of her own:

You are getting sleepy, go to sleep, go to sleep,

Go to sleep at the house of Dakhman

God, keep Lamar safe, help him to avoid malicious energy.

The music of the band, the azawan, is blending well with my song,

Protect us from bad energy, help us preserve the vibe.

Arbina comes out Sept. 16 on Glitterbeat Records.

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