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.

"One day I will sing the songs with no lyrics and everyone can imagine for themselves if it's abut love, disappointment, banalities or about Plato," sings Juana Molina in the opening title song of her new album, 'Un Día,' due for release Oct. 7.

A recent evening on the Santa Monica Pier in California was, in fact, that one day. As the innovative Argentine electro-folk singer-composer previewed some material from that album, she indeed mostly sang just sounds and not words at all. For that matter, when she did sing actual words, they were in Spanish and therefore not understood by many in the audience. And the words to the song quoted above are also in Spanish, as were the words on her four previous albums. But that's not enough for her these days.

Is there any artist in America or Europe who has covered the scope of his or her culture's music to the extent that Rachid Taha has with the wide range of sounds from Algeria/North Africa and its diaspora? Any artist from anywhere?

"No! Just Rachid Taha. In the whole world."

Well, that's the authoritative word on the matter -- from, uh, Rachid Taha, delivered with a smile, but the kind that carries a sense of certainty. OK, so he might not be the most unbiased party on this. But as the saying goes, it ain't braggin' if you can back it up. And shortly after he made that statement backstage at the California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, he backed it up with little room for doubt with a show as part of the summer's global-minded Grand Performances series coming midway through a very short North American tour.

It was an odd scene one recent evening. The Brazilian Minister of Culture -- a graying but robust man in his 60s -- danced frenetically, goofily with a 20-something longhaired, bearded American hippie. Both flailed their legs and arms, both flashed huge grins and sparkly eyes, exuding pure joy, and then walked away, arms around each other into the night.

Unusual? Maybe. But not entirely, given the setting: On stage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of a delighted crowd of more than 12,000 people, most of them dancing along. This sort of tableau is exactly the kind of thing the people at the Bowl have tried to make routine for a decade now since founding the World Festival, an annual series put on in association with noted non-commercial radio station KCRW-FM in Santa Monica. The dancing fools this night were the evening's headliners: Brazilian great Gilberto Gil -- co-founder with Caetano Veloso and others of the '60s tropicalista movement, jailed and exiled as a dissident and now for the last five years his government's culture czar -- and Devendra Banhart -- the young prince of what has been described variously as Freak Folk and New Weird (or Wyrd) America, though truth be told he reaches well beyond those labels.

Some artists make music so distinct and unto itself that it's easy to overlook, or at least forget, that these artists -- such as Miles Davis and the Beatles, for example -- were in fact heavily influenced by others. Caetano Veloso is one of those artists, as well. In nearly 40 years he's covered so much ground but with so distinct an approach at all stages that trying to characterize any particular phase or album as anything different from any other just seems pointless and wrongheaded. Some have termed his most recent release, 'Cê,' a "rock" album. But, really, it's simply a Caetano Veloso album, just as Miles Davis' 'Sketches of Spain' isn't a classical-fusion album, it's Davis. Or 'Rubber Soul' isn't a folk-rock album, it's a Beatles album.

For decades, Brazil has been all but a global music capital rivaling any others, whether via the '50s bossa nova craze, 'The Girl From Ipanema' and Sergio Mendes' Brasil '66 forty-or-so years ago, the '80s-'90s discoveries/rediscoveries of Caetano Veloso and other tropicalia idols by, among others, David Byrne and his Luaka Bop label or Beck's homages to that same scene a little more recently. The big breakthrough never quite happened, though. Sure, there are some astounding legacies, notably Veloso, whose 2006 album 'Cê' continued a remarkable decades-long streak of mold-breaking releases, to second-generation star Bebel Gilberto, whose recent 'Momento' furthers her place as a leading voice in 21st century bossa nova, if not quite living up to the groundbreaking work of her father, João Gilberto.