E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mix tape 2004 Ten telling moments in the world of music BY JOSH KUN

Here were some of my favorite hits of the past year, musical and otherwise.

1) Bebo & Cigala, Lágrimas negras (BMG). Sometimes music can have such an impact on us that it becomes secondary and it’s emotions that count. This unlikely collaboration between Cuban piano veteran Bebo Valdés and Spanish flamenco singer Diego el Cigala is that kind of music. After a few listens, the familiar melodies of these boleros and tangos, which are transformed by Cigala’s ancient voice, drift away, and we’re left with a stunning lesson in cross-cultural friendship. The respect for tradition and musicianship runs so deep here that that you can almost hear the musicians listening to each other as they play.

2) Lenny Bruce, Let the Buyer Beware (Shout! Factory). As much as I appreciate Howard Stern’s rambling rants against the Bush administration and his obsessions with Michael Powell and FCC regulations, he still hasn’t arrived at a Brucean stage of delirium and mania in the face of a government that hides behind "decency" and "morals." These six CDs of visionary spieling start in 1960 and follow Bruce until he snaps, and there isn’t a moment that doesn’t feel like a balm for what we’re living through now. Bruce was a philosopher of fundamentalism the way Marx was a philosopher of capitalism, and we need him now more than ever.

3) The return of Kate Bush (sort of). In lieu of an actual comeback, I’ll take whatever welcome hauntings I can get. She floats through Blu Mar Ten’s cuddler "I Wake Up" and gets a beautifully botched cloning by the Futureheads when they twitch and jitter through their cover of her "Hounds of Love." Has Vanessa Carlton even heard "Babooshka"?

4) Ciara w/ Missy Elliott, "1, 2 Step" (LaFace). In a year when the only good hip-hop was bad hip-hop (so much so that we actually believe that the Kanye West album is a masterpiece and that crunk is a second coming of techno innovation), this little track might be 2004’s most fleeting pleasure alongside the club thuggery of LL Cool J’s "Headsprung" and Pitbull’s "Culo." Ciara melts and Missy double-dutches over little more than Galaga laser beams and beats that snap like fresh bubble gum.

5) Andrés Calamaro, El cantante (DRO East West Spain). The last time we heard from Argentina’s troubled prince of song, he was unloading like a speed freak at a tango bar on an album that was five CDs long. As ingenious as his musical binging can be, Calamaro is best when he’s a little cleaned up. Here he plays the role of a retiring cantina poet and, with the help of some of Spain’s top musicians, pays elegant, acoustic tribute to the likes of Hector Lavoe and Atahualpa Yupanqui. It’s worth it alone to hear "Estadio azteca," where Buenos Aires longs for Mexico City and a world where caramels are shaped like hearts.

6) Brian Wilson, Smile (Nonesuch). When the most famous unfinished album finally gets finished, we’re reminded of what "Surf’s Up" really means: "A blind class aristocracy, back through the op’ra glass you see, the pit and pendulum drawn. Columnated ruins domino!" There’s also vegetables, barnyards, and wind chimes, "You Are My Sunshine" and Plymouth Rock, all rolled out by Wilson and Van Dyke Parks in a swirling epic of California hallucination. Unfortunately, it was released a few years too late to save Phil Spector.

7) Usher, "Yeah!" (Arista, Kassanova & Crème remix featuring Tego Calderón). Reggaeton boss Tego Caldeón gives Usher an ego check and Lil Jon gets a much-needed rest. If this was the year hip-hop discovered reggaeton and urban radio went bi-lingual ("mucho bling-bling"), then it was also the year that reggaeton reminded hip-hop of a Puerto Rican birthright that goes way deeper than "ay mami, ay papi" moans.

8) Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox and Dan Warner (Continuum). This mini tome is the ultimate one-stop anthology for ear thinkers. In the name of what the editors dub "the dawning of a new sonic sensibility," we get a much needed collage of music writing that puts ideas and genres on shuffle and flips channels between Luigi Russolo and Brian Eno, Marshall McCluhan and William S. Burroughs. A portable archive of sound’s intellectual history that assumes the world is made of noise.

9) Tegan and Sara, So Jealous (Vapor). Let us not settle for Ashlee or Lindsay (or even Gwen). Instead, let us praise these Canadian twins who actually sing and write complicated indie-pop songs out of the ashes of post-punk. With lean, reedy voices that pile into layered melodies and consistently smart, clever lyrics, this is the album people should have been putting on when they were reaching for Franz Ferdinand.

10) Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes. "Some people get born, you know, to the wrong names, the wrong parents. . . . You call yourself what you wanna call yourself. This is the land of the free." Dylan’s greatest commentary on American identity since he yodeled "Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues," and it was 30 seconds shorter.