“It was always a crapshoot in terms of audience, unless you had Ravi Shankar or a big flamenco show,” founder Robert Browning says of the World Music Institute in its early days. This season, the WMI marks twenty years with far more than sitars and guitars. Regulars like the Portuguese fado singer Cristina Branco and the Afro-Brazilian Balé Folclórico da Bahia will perform—but so will Sidi Goma, a Sufi group barely known outside its village in India. And a New York Public Library for the Performing Arts photo exhibit (opens September 10) will showcase the institute’s color and spectacle.
World Music Institute, season starts September 12; see heartheworld.org.