My current favorite music is the music of the western Sahara desert (mostly but not all Tuareg). Northern Mali and Niger have the hottest music scene in the world today, imho. And it's very much a function of cross-cultural remixing.

Tuareg culture is ancient, pre-Islamic, and it has a long and beautiful tradition of music and poetry, which falls along gender lines. Traditionally, women played most music, while men wrote poetry in the lovely Tamasheq language. But when guitars, radios, and recordings arrived in the 1960s/1970s, the instrument had no role in the traditions, and they could make something new. The poetry fused with the rhythms, while the new wave of guitarists dug into Dire Straits and Santana along with their own traditions. The results are astounding - deep, soulful, melodic, improvisational.

Check out Tinariwen and Bombino for the hottest bands in the scene (again imho). If you dig them, keep digging, there's a lot more where that came from. And due to civil war and other problems at home, a lot of the musicians tour relentlessly in the West. I see a half-dozen Tuareg concerts a year!