Field guide
Music has a where
Genre tells you what something sounds like. Place tells you what it grew out of — and often why it sounds that way at all. 40 places below, each with the traditions it invented and the artists worth starting with.
Northern Europe 5
Western Europe 8
Southern Europe 5
Eastern Europe 5
East & South Asia 3
Africa 3
The Caribbean 2
The Americas 6
Oceania 2
Middle East 1
This list is deliberately short. There are hundreds of countries in the underlying data and most would make a page with four artists and nothing to say — so these are the ones with enough catalog to be worth walking into.
Other ways in: by genre, by decade, by effort, or by what you're doing.