Gather 'round, kids, and I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time, music wasn't like it is today. You could go into a music store -- an actual building, not a website! -- and you'd find all the music neatly separated. I always liked exploring the "World Music" section, 'cause it would have interesting things like Maori chants and Tuvan throat singing and Bulgarian polyphonies and Guinean kora music. Sometimes each country would have its own section. Every visit was an international adventure.

Sounds quaint, I know. Because today, I'm sitting here by the campfire holding three of my favorite albums of this young year. And they would have flummoxed the album-categorizers of yore.

Where, for example, would you file an album by a classically trained Hindustani violin player. The India section, you say? But what if she's from Texas and her collaborators play, among other things, human beatbox, cello, spoons, tabla, cajon, and alto saxophone? See what's going on here? The walls, my young friends, have fallen. Those old bin dividers are useless in the face of what Nistha Raj has done on her album Exit 1. Which, by the way, is something you should listen to just to confound your parents. Raj and her friends aren't some kind of musical gimmick; they're really talented musicians who have made something gloriously fresh-sounding.