WOMEX, its name an acronym for World Music Expo, is an itinerant annual conference, trade fair, and showcase concert event—in the manner of SXSW or CMJ—bruited by its organizer, the German record label and festival promotion firm Piranha, to be the “largest and leading international networking lounge for World, Roots, Folk, Ethnic, Traditional, Local, and Diaspora Music.”

“Who Will Save Rock and Roll?” sang those protopunk New Yorkers the Dictators in 2000, and the question still resonates not only with aging boomers nostalgic for the power chords of yesteryear but with anyone who’s begun to suspect that contemporary pop music, to be blunt, sucks.