Phleng pheua chiwit — Thai “Songs for Life” — is a Thai form of protest music that started in the ’70s to address the issues of the working class and blended Thai traditional instruments with Western folk, rock and reggae….

Japanese kabuki theater takes us back several centuries….

Korean Nongak is a whole load of fun. Nongak is a public form of percussion performed by twenty to thirty performers, most often in a rural setting….

Naamyam is a traditional Cantonese form of improvised, performed poetry, which you may find in Hong Kong….

According to legend, the founder of music in China was Ling Lun, who made bamboo pipes that sounded like the songs of birds….

Bon odori is a public, participatory dance that is meant to attract young and old, both trained dancers and those who just want to celebrate….

We can surely all get along, at least if we’re making music! In this exuberant clip from “Zug des Lebens” (“Train of Life,”) Jewish and non-Jewish, presumably Roma musicians find common ground in song….

“Mysterious” Bulgarian singing is one of the great cultural wonders of the world….

Our favorite band of Romanian Roma musicians is Taraf de Haidouks (Band of Brigands!) is based in Clejani, a village outside of Bucharest, in Romania’s southeast.

Quick, don’t think, just answer — what’s more incredible: the boisterous Balkan Brass of the Boban and Marko Markovic Orkestar, or the amazing Mexican brass ensemble Banda Estrellas de Sinaloa de German Lizarraga…?

“Little Rabbit” (in Hungarian, ‘Hová mégy te kisnyulacska’”) is a Hungarian children’s song about a little bunny who goes into the forest, collects sticks and builds a garden so he can grow flowers for his mom. Probably not a true story…..

Nowadays you can find a place to dance the Czech/Polish dance known as Polka in most large cities around the Western world, and not just in traditional Polish beer halls….

In 2004 Ruslana, a singer from Ukraine’s Hutsul ethno-cultural group, won the continent’s Eurovision Song Contest while representing the nation — a really big deal….

One of the most important traditional holidays in Belarus is the summer solstice holiday of Kupalle…

On August 23, 1989, more than a million people from the Baltic nations — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — linked hands to form a human chain almost 400 miles long in an event called “The Baltic Way….”

Kalinka is a mid-19th century Russian song that has had multiple lives: as a pre-Soviet standard, a sanctioned Soviet-era folk anthem, a post-Soviet elctro-pop hit and, not at all least, the soundtrack for “Tetris…..”

If your idea of heaven is spending several days in a small town in Serbia in with 600,000 trumpeters — and how could it not be! — get yourself to Guča.

Limbo lower now….!

As far as we’re concerned, Rikki Jai will forever be the only Chutney Soca King….

One of All Around This World’s favorite soca songs is “Ragga Ragga,” a mid-’90s Caribbean mega-hit by Bajan musician Stedson Wilshire, otherwise known as “Red Plastic Bag….