The thumb piano is a wondrous object, simple and hypnotizing. It’s like a handheld video game that hooks up to your soul. With this instrument, Konono No 1 creates spellbinding dance music. Seeing the Congolese band in person is monumental enough, and yet Konono was only 1 of 6 acts at the KCRW World Festival.

The lineup was intense; its scope boggles the mind. Watching Tinariwen and Konono  No 1 reach magical levels, I contemplated how their styles were born without the influences and context in which I understand music. For them, there is no Beatles, no Michael Jackson, no Led Zeppelin in their songs. Although Baaba Maal is a romantic and cool showman—a superman—seeing him doesn’t inverse reality like these other two. Or, rather, he and Playing For Change make music inspired by globe-trotting. Maal’s songs acknowledge and weave instruments and styles from all over time and place, which he pulls together in his signature energetic way. Full of positive vibes, he delivered songs about love, nature and television. Playing For Change performed many cover songs with musicians and singers they’ve picked up around the world through a mega-giant-widescope project—again, can’t believe that all of these bands were on the same bill. Each one represented so much.

And in America’s corner we had Yeasayer and Fool’s Gold. Fool’s Gold invented its music in the dark forests of Echo Park. The original tribe has slimmed down to 6 or 7 members. While the songs are tighter, that percussive wildness laced with Hebrew is what made the natives feel at home and free, lost in a recognizable but foreign dubbed scenario. They made sense here. On the other hand, Yeasayer doesn’t come to mind when you say “afro pop.” They’re rather future-oriented and stoic. Watching them, I didn’t feel the earth move; rather, I felt beamed up to a cloud starship and their voices were a chorus of alien-angels. It’s not just technology. It’s that I can understand what they’re saying and where they come from. They sounded great and stuck to my brain like an abduction souvenir—but they didn’t make me feel as transcendental.

—Daiana Feuer