Finding Talent in the Fine Print

ENLARGE

Mbongwana Star performing at Coachella on Friday. Photo: Nate Watters/Coachella

Indio, Calif.

If the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, held this past weekend and scheduled for next weekend with the same lineup, is the premier event of its kind in the U.S., it’s not due to its headliners. Coachella sells out before they are announced, and this year they weren’t all that special: a reuniting Guns N’ Roses, which hasn’t released worthy new music in almost 25 years; Calvin Harris, perpetrator of cliché EDM tracks; and LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy’s project that disbanded with much fuss in 2011 and is now back for a round of festival appearances.

Trend-minded modern-music fans were more likely to want to see sets by A$AP Rocky, James Bay, Chvrches, Disclosure, Ellie Goulding, Grimes, Jack Ü and Zedd than ones by GN’R and LCD Soundsystem. Mr. Harris, though, remains a crowd favorite, proving that even among the knowledgeable, there can be no accounting for taste.

But lackluster headliners can be rendered an afterthought by Coachella’s very deep lineup. Each year, the festival produces a poster that includes a list of all scheduled acts—more than 200 this year—with big names in large print, the lesser-knowns down near the bottom in a smaller font. It’s the tiny-type artists who can make the festival a kind of crystal ball. In 2010, not only Florence & the Machine but Sia and the xx were listed near the bottom; a year later, so were James Blake and Mumford & Sons; in 2012, Gary Clark Jr. and Kendrick Lamar appeared down below. All have moved on to achieve artistic and commercial success.

The tiny-type acts tend to go on early. Bands that performed around noon included Ex Hex, a punk trio; the charming folk-punk duo Girlpool; Hælos, which taps into trip-hop; dance-pop’s Phases; punk-pop’s Sheer Mag; and Steady Holiday, the stage name of singer-composer Dre Babinski. It’s worth noting that all these emerging groups feature women in prominent roles. Another gratifying noontime act was Mbongwana Star, in which wheelchair-bound singers Coco Ngabali and Théo Nzonza fronted a funky trio that played with drive and elasticity.

Mbongwana Star came to Coachella from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it was among the festival’s many acts based outside the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, the traditional wellsprings of talent at major American multi-artist concert events. Coachella ’16 offered rap from South Korea via Epik High; a rejuvenating take on reggae by Jamaica’s Chronixx and Protoje; ballads by the songstress Tei Shi, a native of Argentina; and clever jazz-minded electronica by Austrian producer Parov Stelar. In the Yuma tent, the air-conditioned dance club on the festival grounds, a range of slinky, seductive house music was spun by producers from Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa and Venezuela.

On Friday, concertgoers could have programmed a personal bill comprising only acts from France: Ibeyi, the twin sisters who wove the rhythms of Cuba into their fiery soul and down-tempo electronica sung in English and Yoruba; the delightful Christine and the Queens, a project of Héloïse Letissier that blended pop, dash and dazzling choreography; M83, the producer-turned-rock star who commanded the main stage (thus earning big type); and Ludovic Navarre’s St Germain, which featured musicians from Brazil, Martinique and Senegal as well as Guimba Kouyaté, who has already taken his place among the great guitarists of Mali.

Indulging in such self-directed programming mirrors how today’s popular music ignores not only geography, but genre, too. Coachella presents more dance music than any other kind of popular form, but guitar-based rock was well represented. If Guns N’ Roses did little more than dust off musty tracks, rock was alive when performed by, in addition to the above-mentioned tiny typers, Autolux, Dan Auerbach’s the Arcs (with a guest appearance by Joe Walsh), the Last Shadow Puppets, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and the powerful quartet Savages. Then there was Courtney Barnett, a priceless gem who appeared in tiny type in 2014 at her first Coachella and continues to dazzle with her insightful songwriting, raucous electric guitar and unassuming stage persona.

There was a little bit of excellence for every taste. The British jazz trio GoGo Penguin played an exhilarating set before a club-size crowd on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday saxophonist Kamasi Washington and his band erased the line between jazz and funk. Country artist Chris Stapleton packed a tent to overflowing on Sunday near sunset, his gruff, soul-inflected voice as affecting as always. Seventy-six-year-old Mavis Staples mixed folk, gospel and soul in her Friday set, at one point jumping from “Freedom Highway,” a tune she sang with her father and siblings in the early ’60s, to a cut from her 2016 album, “Livin’ on a High Note.”

By offering so many tiny-type acts for discovery and ensuring attendees can program their own Coachella, the festival announced, however subtly, its intention to reflect not only how contemporary music is accessed—by choice rather than dictated by commercial classifications—but also to suggest that multicultural cross-pollination may provide a wealth of artists in the years ahead.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.