Looking for the album, song or even trend that sums up the past year from a global music perspective? The 'Slumdog Millionaire' soundtrack is not a bad place to start -- a film set in Indian slums, directed by Britain's Danny Boyle, with music involving Bollywood's current standard setter A.R. Rahman and Sri Lankan-born and London-based post-rap star M.I.A. And while it has no direct connection to the recent attacks in Mumbai, the timing makes it even more poignant. Or maybe a collection of songs by Kenyan artists recorded in praise of the U.S. president-to-be, whose father was from Kenya but whose mother was of English, Irish, German and Cherokee heritage, and he himself was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.

But the problem with trying to identify any global zeitgeist is it's just so, well, global. And no matter what music can do, no matter what insights it can give us into war (Georgia) or redemption from incomprehensible barbarity (former Sudanese "lost boy" turned rapper Emmanuel Jal), the experience of music, at the core, is personal. Whether it's epiphany, cultural insight, artistic innovation or "mere" enjoyment provided, even the most shared experiences are ultimately individual.

Some of the pastries were sweet, some savory -- in the case of the blintzes, they managed to be tastily both, even if cold. Same for the music, though it was hot. It was an evening of Eastern European Jewish wedding music in a West Hollywood community center, a perfect way to kick off the Chanukah/Hanukkah/Khanike season, maybe even better than dreidels and latkes. Well, not many things are better than latkes, but still.

Aaron Paley, co-founder and chair of the Yiddishkayt culture and education organization, which sponsored the event, asked, "How many people here speak Yiddish?" in Yiddish. About half the 250 or so people in the audience raised hands, and not just the older immigrants from the Ukraine and surrounding lands but some younger people, too. "How many found out about this from e-mail?" he followed, and even more hands went up, not just the younger people but most of the older ones as well. Old world, new world, one world.

New York's annual globalFEST world-music showcase was initiated in 2004 to combat the U.S.'s image problems in other countries, the increased xenophobia in this country and the intensified homeland security barriers that plagued that scene here in the post-9/11 climate. Some artists from other cultures weren't keen to tour here, and some of those who were encountered visa difficulties and other travel issues that made it an iffy prospect.

So what will there be to talk about this year, now that all the problems have been solved with the election of Barack Obama to be President?

Well ... it's not quite that simple, says globalFEST co-director Bill Bragin. And it's not just that the sixth edition of the concert will take place Jan. 11, nine days before Obama is even inaugurated. "I think most people I know are not expecting a messiah," he says. "There's an understanding that it will take a long time to course-correct. Some things have to move slowly."

Femi Kuti is dragging a bit, recovering from an illness that marred his otherwise triumphant European tour last month. But speaking by phone from his home outside Lagos, Nigeria, he becomes impassioned, his speech growing faster and his voice sharper as he talks about the brutal social conditions that shaped the musicians who he places at the top of his influences. It's something that figures prominently on his new 'Day by Day' album, his first studio effort in more than seven years.

"They had to risk their lives to play this music," he says of the idols-in-question. "You can't imagine the life that was there, and this music produced all the music we are listening to today."

The thing is, he's not talking about his father, the late Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who came under attack -- literally in the case of a 1977 raid on his compound that resulted in the death of Fela's mother -- from the repressive Nigerian government. Rather, Femi is talking about the African-American jazz musicians who toured the South in the mid-20th century in the face of heightened and often violent racial oppression.

Suppose the Beatles had introduced themselves to the world with the so-called White Album -- essentially solo material with the group backing each member in turn. Or perhaps if the first time we'd experienced Kiss was with the four solo albums the greasepainted rockers released in the mid-'70s.

That's sort of how the Brazilian band +2 burst on the world, though in their case the bursting took place over three albums, each spotlighting one of the three member, released over a span of seven years: the soft but askew 'Music Typewriter' billed as Moreno + 2 in 2001, the oft-electronics-based 'Sincerely Hot' by Domenico + 2 in 2004 and the recent wide-ranging trilogy-closer 'Futurismo' under the name Kassin +2. Each one reflects the respective front person's aesthetics, with distinctive takes on stylized updates of bossa nova, samba and colorful psychedelic tropicalia traditions.

MTV Africa just held its inaugural awards show this past weekend -- the MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMA), held in Nigeria's capital, Abuja -- with at least some intent of helping spur global interest in artists that are stars on the continent but pretty much unknown elsewhere. Benjamin Lebrave has a similar, if far more modest, goal with a new venture as well. He's launched Akwaaba Music, billed as a "fair trade" label distributing music by "artists who've never had much opportunity outside of their native land."

By "fair trade" he means net revenues are split 50-50 between label and the licensee (with expenses and overhead kept low by making the focus on digital distribution, at the moment primarily via the Akwaaba Web site and iTunes). By "never had much opportunity," he means exactly that -- acts producing interesting music that has built some level of a following at home but with little or no exposure other places, regardless of style. Beyond that, the mission is pretty flexible, as evidenced by the range on the label's debut release, the 'Akwaaba Wo Africa' compilation that runs from acoustic West African griot music to reggae to salsa to some very contemporary urban approaches.

How do you hear music? And don't be a wiseass and say, "With my ears." Seriously: What happens with you, an individual, as sounds work their way into your head, are processed through your brain, and interpreted through your experiences and sensibilities into that thing we call music? How do you make sense of things that might be unfamiliar, things from other cultures or from experimental approaches or even from glitches in the transmission? Some of that was addressed by neurologist Oliver Sacks in his 2007 book 'Musicophilia,' which for a music lover includes things scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote. (We can lose the ability to enjoy or even recognize music??? Noooooooooo!!!)

But these are also questions inherent in 'In the House of Mirrors,' the new and, sadly, last album by unclassifiable composer/producer/contextualizer Hector Zazou. The Algerian-born, Paris-based artist passed away in September at age 60, having just completed this project for which he formed the group Swara with four musicians from India and Uzbekistan working in classical/traditional formats. It's at once the most straightforward album he ever made -- and the most profound example of his distinctive, if elusive, stamp. (There are long samples of the songs that can be heard here.)

"I used to go to this old viola player," a friend tells of his youthful years in the post-revolution 1980s of Iran, when Islamic rule made music difficult to find. "He was about 80 and had a photocopy shop in one of the old parts of Tehran. He had this huge archive of LPs, and I'd order some Persian or classical music and he'd record it on cassette. That was the only way. Then we'd copy it and distribute it. On many occasions, I went to someone's house, someone I didn't know before, someone I just met. He'd invite me to dinner or something, and I would see my own cassette there that had circulated! So he got Bach from a friend of a friend of a friend who got it from me. That was my experience with music in my teenage years and my 20s."

So it was with some sense of wonder that he handed over a bag across a restaurant table. Inside were stacks of CDs, about 20 of them, fresh from the markets and street stalls of Tehran. He'd just returned from his second trip to Iran in recent months, his first visits to his native country in more than 11 years, and the bounty he presented was evidence of the dramatic changes that had happened while he was away. There was a four-CD set of archival ethnographic recordings from various regions of Iran released via the Mahoor Institute, several sets of experimental/modern classical and film soundtrack compositions released by the wide-ranging Hermes Records label and some street-stall-purchased burned MP3 discs of uncertain provenance containing everything from contemporary Iranian pop and a disc of Persian folk/classical star Sima Bina to lengthy recordings made in the field from tribal dance events, all blaring zirne and burbling hand drums. It was an impressive variety even by Los Angeles standards. For him, based on the Iran he'd left behind in the '90s, it was unthinkable.

Meet the 'Novas Bossas,' same as the bossa nova?

Yes and no. 'Novas Bossas' is the new collaborative album by the great Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento and the Jobim Trio. And, as the name implies, it's both an homage to and twist on the bossa nova traditions, with a full-circle trip back to the roots, which, in the process, refreshes the style.

The set was ostensibly released to mark the 50th anniversary of bossa nova and honor the late composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of the form's foundational artists. Jobim's vast catalog includes the ubiquitous breakthrough 'The Girl From Ipanema' ('Garota de Ipanema') and the iconic score to the 1959 film 'Black Orpheus.' And the Jobim trio isn't just taking his legacy in its name but in its genetic makeup, as it is anchored by his son, guitarist Paulo, and grandson, pianist Daniel. And both on the album and in a warmly intimate night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles this past week, the music was at once as familiar as one would expect from sounds that have become ingrained in he global language or music -- a core of jazz, pop, even classical repertoires -- but also in the best moments bracingly alive and growing. It all succeeds via simplicity, sticking to the basics in instrumentation -- just piano, acoustic guitar, bass, drums and vocals onstage and little more on the recordings but with a progressive streak that utilizes imaginative harmonic development and almost chorale-like interplay.

Miles Copeland grew up around spies and diplomats -- his dad worked for the C.I.A. and the family lived in the Middle East for much of his childhood. Still, he was surprised to get a call from then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office a few years ago. He thought it was a friend pulling a joke.

Instead, it was the start of a chain of events that took him to Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan to recruit Arabic stars for collaborations in Los Angeles with Western musicians. In Cairo, he found boisterous shaabi-style pop star Saad El Soghayar. In Damascus, he signed up devout Muslim composer/keyboard player Tareq Al Nasser. Beirut, at the time reeling from military conflict with Israel and the bombing assassination of Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, yielded both young singer-activist Tania Saleh and pioneering hip-hop artist Wael Kodeih (a.k.a. Rayess Bek). Also brought into the project was Iraqi guitarist-composer Ilham Al Madfai, whose groundbreaking blends of Western and traditional music in the '60s and '70s led to him living in exile since the 1979 revolution.