By Robert Andrews BBC News Online

Cardiff is gearing for what could become the UK's premi�re world music event.

Artists from as far afield as Ghana, Jamaica, Spain, Cuba and Ireland are in the Welsh capital as the inaugural Worldport Festival debuts.

Cardiff reminds me of Glasgow before it became Capital of Culture. Time has come for Cardiff to make a statement

Jim Smith, Worldport director

The five-day event is a celebration of rootsy styles from distant lands, converging on Cardiff Bay - the revitalised old docks area which was a hub for population migration and multiculturalism for over a century.

Organisers hope it will offer impetus to the city's European Capital of Culture bid for 2008.

Courtney Pine, Bob Geldof and Abdullah Ibrahim are amongst the cool cats playing around town for the first time.

Cosmopolitan culture

Worldport's mission to lay on the most diverse music to hand could hardly have chosen a better inaugural venue outside London,

The UK's largest coal-exporting port at the turn of the 20th century, Cardiff's docks attracted merchant seamen from around the world looking to settle.

Buena Vista Social Club's Cachaito Lopez plays

Later, the famed Tiger Bay cosmpolitan community became a megnet for nationals from over 50 countries, many of whose descendants give it a suprising multiculturalism, spawning talent like Shirley Bassey and musicians with a Yemeni flavour.

This week, the new and the old meet up in music at Europe's youngest capital - Cameroon's Manu Dibango joins London Community Gospel Choir, Ghana's Pan African Orchestra plays with Stree Shakti of India.

Neglected forms

"We felt there was a gap in the market for a jazz, blues, world and roots event. Cardiff is on the up," said festival director Jim Smith.

"The first idea was to put on a jazz festival, but that was already being done well enough with the Brecon Jazz Festival.

There are a huge amount of different cultures in Africa alone, but everything tends to be bundled under the 'world music' and 'jazz' umbrella

Jim Smith, Worldport director

"By Cardiff's centenary in 2005, we hope to have the biggest world music festival of its kind in the UK.

"It is an important area of music that's been neglected. Indian and African music has always been underlying but never recognised in its own right."

Essentially a blanket term referring to non-western pop or classical music, world styles are creeping into the mainstream.

Blur's Damon Albarn recently released a cross-genre album of music from Mali with Afel Bocoum while British Asians Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney - who lambasted the "world" label in January - have won critical acclaim.

"There are a huge amount of different cultures in Africa alone, but everything tends to be bundled under the 'world music' and 'jazz' umbrella," said Jim Smith.

"But, as global communication is becoming better and better, the boundaries are blurring."

World influence

Taking his lead from a similar festival in Rotterdam, he wants to fix this year's modest Worldport permanently to Cardiff's cultural calendar.

Smith's secret, however, is his past life as Glasgow International Jazz Festival director of six years.

Courtney Pine and his band play Cardiff

He was instrumental in bringing the culture capital tag to the Scottish city in 1990.

Now Cardiff, claiming an all-Wales impetus, is ready to mount its own bid, and Smith - seeing reflections in metropolitan time - is confident of success.

"The place reminds me of what was happening in Glasgow before it won the bid," says the circuit jazz saxophonist.

"Cardiff has certainly got a good chance because it is a capital city.

"Even if it doesn't make the final three, I hope it will be shortlisted because, if there is any city I'd love to live in right now, it's Cardiff."

Inner-city festival

Worldport organisers are also in hush-hush negotiations with competing cities - all old port towns and all seeking extra urban renewal, plus a couple more dockside wine bars.

But, as the world's ethnic styles descend from the margins on Wales, that is for another day.

"We hope to build this up into a big worldwide event," said Smith

"Whether we succeed in the culture capital bid is relatively unimportant. Time has come for Cardiff to make a statement."