THE WOMAD festival, now in its 33rd year, is the country’s premier event not only for experiencing some of the world’s most accomplished musicians but also for breaking down musical borders and boundaries.

The term “fusion” doesn’t even do justice to the intense cross-cultural fertilisation that characterizes so many of the performances.

Take 47Soul, for example, a Palestinian dance outfit who specialise in what they call “shamstep.”

This is “Arabic music” in terms of its melody and rhythm but as you’ve never heard it before, with vocals influenced by ragga and hip hop, alongside some seriously heavy sub-bass and phat-drum programming that would not be out of place in a warehouse party off the M25.

It is a “celebration of culture, music and resistance,” they tell us — an apt description of Womad at its best.

Orange Blossom, meanwhile, are almost the inverse.

They purvey urban dance music in terms of form and structure but overlaid with north African rhythms and vocals, producing a sound both hypnotic and insistent — and thoroughly compelling.

Red Baraat, hailing from New York, combine the joyous rhythms of Punjabi bhangra with the deep funk of the New Orleans-style brass band.

Unsurprisingly for an act which effectively welds a wedding band with a funeral band, the result is both mournful and uplifting, often simultaneously, but always infectiously danceable.

Mbongwana Star, a multiracial, intergenerational Congolese outfit fronted by two wheelchair-bound lead singers, defy categorisation altogether.

To have survived the atrocious, Western-sponsored near-holocaust that has been ravaging the Congo for almost 20 years is to have developed a fanatical commitment to life and this devotion certainly comes across in their captivating live act.

Sounding at times like the Ragga Twins playing highlife with The Fall, their music is mostly based around classic central African guitar hooks with beats often reminiscent of Jamaican dancehall but all shrouded in heavy distortion and electronica. Original, incessant and utterly life-affirming.

Violins Barbares — from Mongolia, Bulgaria and France — are three virtuoso musicians playing the morin khoor, a Mongolian cello, the gadulka, a Bulgarian bowed fiddle, and a variety of percussion.

Not content with the full mastery of their own musical backgrounds, their set also includes pieces from Afghanistan and compositions that would be familiar to any lover of English and Irish music.

The set glides effortlessly between everything from fast and furious wedding songs to intense and impassioned laments, all interlaced with humour, showmanship and total respect for the music.

Drawing out the links and inter-relations between different musical cultures, their music demonstrates perfectly the universality of folk music.

The Kocani Orkestar are among the best-known purveyors of the traditional Gypsy brass sound that has taken music lovers in the West by storm in recent years.

This authentic sound evolved from the combination of the eastern scales brought west by the gypsies of Rajasthan and the Turkish military brass bands they joined during the Ottoman Empire.

The result is one of the most blissfully exuberant cacophonies yet invented.

As Miles Davis commented on hearing this music for the first time, “I didn’t know the trumpet could be played like that.”

It is a phrase that perfectly encapsulates the Womad experience. You’re constantly stumbling across music you didn’t know existed and wouldn’t have thought possible — until you hear it.