Ukrainian-Canadian Balaklava Blues is the fest’s headliner, and Abe makes it clear that audiences should expect a lot from them. “They have been closing other big music festivals in Europe,” she says, “So we should be in for a treat.” Before forming the group, Mark and Marichka Marczyk were no strangers to creating music out of disparate, and sometimes clashing, elements. Balaklava Blues is the husband-and-wife duo’s third project, coming on the heels of their successful Lemon Bucket Orkestra, a boozy Balkan 12-piece punk ensemble, and Counting Sheep, proudly billed as a “guerilla folk opera.” Balaklava Blues stays true to the Marczyks’ more-is-more conceptual formula, combining traditional Ukrainian polyphony with skronky EDM beats to create a cultural melange worthy of its name.

For centuries, Mardi Gras Indians—Black and indigenous artists who perform rhythmic call-and-response sections in elaborate costume—have been the cornerstone of New Orleans culture. Big Chief Juan Pardo’s Tribal Gold is a riff on that tradition, with the longtime performer backed up by The New Orleans Suspects, a jazz-funk quartet, in “a mix of indigenous music coming together with that Second Line sound you hear during Mardi Gras,” according to Harris. Blending the Suspects’ funk-inflected grooves with Pardo’s exuberant stage presence, Tribal Gold is a rollicking, over-the-top tour of the bayou and a crash course in New Orleans culture rolled into one.

“Why should we buy our instruments when we can build our own and get the sound we want?” is the ethos of Josefe and Yobu, the duo behind Madalitso. Discovered busking with handmade instruments in Lilongwe, the capital city of their native Malawi, the two soon found themselves touring Europe, and later the United States. Praised for its raw, unpolished instrumentation and joyful authenticity, Madalitso is a medley of strumming, picking, and foot-tapping that gets a lot of mileage out of sparse materials. “They are pure exuberance, pure joy,” Abe says.

Mehrnam Rastegari lives in two worlds: one steeped in traditional music and ancient instruments, one that holds the old ways up to the light of modernity, melding them with contemporary influences. Rastegari, who hails from Iran but now lives in the United States full time, is a singer, violinist, and composer, but she is best known for her performances using a kamancheh, an Iranian bowed instrument dating back to the 10th century. Rastegari is certified as a master kamancheh player and hailed as one of the foremost players in the world; her music is snaky, seductive, and dizzyingly intricate. “You get transported as you hear her play,” says Harris.

Like a Cape Verdean Billie Holiday, Fantcha’s wheelhouse is the wistful torch song. Unlike the other acts in this year’s fest, her sound is “melancholic; the opposite of a party vibe,” according to Abe. There are strong influences in Fantcha’s sound, which borrows from Cape Verdean musical traditions with a heavy dose of Portuguese and Cuban flavor. Fantcha’s presence at the Global Music Festival speaks to the sizable Cape Verdean community in Boston; though she is not a resident of the city, her performance will be “backed by New England–based Cape Verdean musicians,” to ground the global framework in a local context.

“It’s not [typical] European music—it’s a Mediterranean, folkloric sound,” Abe says of southwest France’s San Salvador. “They’re searching for their roots.” The group’s lyrics are in Occitan, a lesser-known Romance language spoken in the south of France, Monaco, Italy, and Catalonia, and their sound marries the ancient language to the ancient sounds of the area’s troubadours. A sextet of vocals and percussion, San Salvador is hard to characterize as a cappella, but they are not particularly easy to characterize as anything else. “You just want to move when you hear them,” says Harris. “They have so much energy.”