Back in the 1970s, Tower of Power asked the musical question, "What is hip?" but cautioned, "What is hip today might well become passé." I don't know if brass bands were ever truly hip, but their popularity seems to be cyclical and currently there's a lot of interest in brass bands in movies and CD releases. Accordions had a long road to respectability. It was really only through music of other countries filtering through to Western consciousness that Lisandro Meza from Colombia and Luis Gonzaga from Brazil became well-known accordionists. Le Zagazougou from Ivory Coast proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that accordions rock.

Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizarrága are a brass band from Mexico who have achieved international fame. They play popular tunes from all over Latin America, including Son and Bolero from Cuba, Cumbia, Salsa and of course Ranchera. I first heard their version of the Son-prégon perennial "El Manicero" at a Cinco de Mayo festival in Oakland where the sound system had a deejay with tons of reverb on his voice like on Mexican radio. I bought that album (EN VIVO DESDE PARIS, FRANCIA) and then another live album by them called HISTÓRICO that includes a wild "popurrí" of "Popotitos (aka Boney Maroni)", "La plaga (aka Good Golly Miss Molly)" and "La tierra de las mil danzas (Land of 1000 dances)"! So right away I have broken my stricture against vocals, but this track will start any party jumping.

More akin to American Jazzmen in their musical sensibilities are Gangbé Brass Band from Benin. "Ajaka," a song about social injustice, takes it down to the percussion and vocals but the brass returns in a jazzy contrapuntal break, with stop-time trumpets against a romping bassline played by James Vodounnon on euphonium. The four trumpets, sax and two trombones are well orchestrated and lay a lyric bed down for the muted trumpet of Aristide Agondanou, clearly a Miles Davis acolyte.

Europe's strongest brass tradition is undoubtedly gypsy or Rom music.

In 1995 Emir Kostunica's film "Underground" featured a soundtrack of Balkan brass bands. The hottest track thereon came from the "fastest trumpet in Guca," which belongs to Boban Markovic (& is actually a flugelhorn). Guca is the annual festival of gypsy music, a sort of Serbian Woodstock that draws 300,000 annually to hear brass music, drink slivovicz and eat boiled cabbage. Boban's orkestar has won the golden trumpet (the battle of the brass bands) five years running. The festival can be heard 20 kms away! Devotees can get a hearty helping of Guca on a double CD set from the German label Network, called GOLDEN BRASS SUMMIT, drawn from 40 years of archival tapes. It opens with four selections from Boban Markovic's Orkestar.

Koçani Orkestar are a Romani family band from a Turkish-speaking part of Macedonia (in former Yugoslavia). Their sound has been described as a fusion of an Ottoman military band with western jazz. They began to tour after being featured in the film "Time of the Gypsies" and have achieved success under the direction of their stellar trumpeter Naat Veliov. There's a great roiling staccato beat underlying some of their tunes which are often in unusual metres: 7/8, 9/8 and 11/8. (Dave Brubeck's ground-breaking jazz album TIME OUT was the result of his trip to Turkey at the suggestion of his teacher Darius Milhaud, where he encountered gypsy brass bands playing in these time signatures.) "Agoniya," Koçani Orkestar's version of the popular Arabic tune "Ya Rayah," is drawn from their album GYPSY MAMBO.

Banda Once de Enero typify the sounds we associate with Latin-American holidays and street parties. They play the type of music that B. Traven (or maybe Ambrose Bierce) would have heard, but theirs is a uniquely Colombian style, where the bands are called Banda Papayera. I found them on the soundtrack to John Sayles' film "Men with Guns." To create a pan-Latin feeling, music from different regions on the Caribbean was included on the soundtrack. It worked brilliantly, thanks to the selection of LA deejay Tom Schnabel. "Fiesta en Corraleja" starts like a wild roundup and you can hear whinnying as the members yell encouragement to one another. Again there is a distinctive bassline keeping things loping along at a nice canter.

Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy was a great excuse for some superb jazz musicians to play around with a different repertoire. Taking time off from his relentlessly avant-garde Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bowie assembled his all-star brass band for a series of albums that covered jazz, funk and pop standards in a refreshingly original way. Hearing Bob Stewart work out on a reggae bass line on tuba is a joy. I once met Vincent Chancey at a party in New York and asked him what he did. I am a jazz French horn player, he replied. Gee, there's not much call for that unless you are in Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, I said, idiotically. Well, I am, he smiled. Although it's twice as long as any other cut on this compilation I wanted to include a strong representative from North America and it's hard to justify excluding The Dirty Dozen or other well-known New Orleans acts. Al Dubin and Harry Warren hit big with the musical scores for Busby Berkeley's "Gold Diggers of 1932" and "42nd Street" and wrote many delightful hits of the Tin Pan Alley era. Their "I Only Have Eyes for You" will never be the same after this brilliant take from Lester and his men.

Much is made of the connection between American jazz and African music, but then ethnowhaddyamacologists are always trying to make a point. Since Ali Farka Toure personally told me (in the mid-1980s) he'd never heard of John Lee Hooker, how can I doubt him? The current flows both ways. Listen to Chopin's "Mazurka opus 7, no 1," and tell me Frederic wasn't listening to New Orleans piano. And before you exclaim, That's the most absurd thing I ever heard, look at the dedication: "A Monsieur Johns à la Nouvelle-Orleans" -- an ancestor of Doctor John who toured Paris no doubt.

But it's unlikely that the Banda Linda horn players from Central African Republic ever heard of Steve Reich, though it's a sure bet he knows of them. The appropriately named Banda people's polyphony is central to their ancient traditional music: each musician has a horn of different pitch and has his own rhythm. The horns are tuned pentatonically with five notes in each group (highs, mid, lower, bass). The music slides in and out of loops. (Duke Ellington and Anton Webern also explored this type of looping polyphony in their work.) The higher notes are played on antelope horns with side mouthpieces, the lower notes are played on tree roots hollowed out by termites. It's trancelike and evolves organically. The piece included accompanies the initiation of young girls, played by Ongo Trogodé or horns from the village of Trogodé.

In Satyajit Ray's debut film masterpiece "Pather Panchali," there is a village festival which features a rag-tag brass band who play snatches of old British marching songs completely off key. Their version of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" is truly remote from its origin, but it's a charming reminder of the decayed colonialism which had recently been lifted from Bengal. New Bharat Brass-Band of Bangalore are a typical wedding ensemble who play popular filmi tunes in fanciful costumes. The barât is the bridal procession which is noisily accompanied by such a band. Well-to-do families of course want an ostentatious performance. The band precedes the bridegroom along the road to his in-laws, playing usually for two hours, enduring traffic, loudspeakers from shops, drunk guests and fireworks. This band is remarkable in that its members comes from different castes: Hindus, Christians and Muslims. While they don't read music they are good at improvising and following the rhythm. The euphoniums play the bass line while the clarinet solos. "Chumma Chumma" comes from the Hindi film "Hum," and was recorded on their tour of Europe.