Devendra Banhart performed for more than two hours on The Pabst Theater stage on Sunday night for a small-but-devoted audience. It was the first time Banhart played in Milwaukee, and most of his material was from the yet-to-be-released "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyo" which comes out later this month on XL Recordings.

Banhart's music has been dubbed indie folk, freak folk and psych folk, but it's nearly impossible to label the 26-year-old musician's style. Born in Texas and raised in Venezuela, Banhart draws from a variety of genres including folk, rock, jazz and the spirit of Tropicalism, a Brazilian style of art and music from the '60s and '70s. His voice ranges from a quivering Nick Drake to a much deeper Nick Cave or Jim Morrison. At times he appeared to be almost channeling the Lizard King, especially when grasping the mic with both hands and belting out lyrics in a mucho sexy yet tortured sort of way.

Banhart -- although clearly loving the limelight of center stage -- plugged his band mate's individual projects and turned over the mic a few times. For last night's show, the band went by the "Spiritual Boner(z)" -- the "z" is silent, Banhart explained -- but the group has a new name with just about every venue, including the Tennessee Cops, Hairy Fairy, Deep Fried Hummingbird and Brain Taint.

The loosy-goosy name changing is in step with the rest of Banhart's style. Clearly, he  had a partial set-list, breaking into "Chinese Children" per the request of someone in the audience, and later, he invited a random audience member on stage to play a half-finished, original tune. For the last number, he invited the entire audience on stage for a "dance party" which resulted in close to 100 people getting down with the band, including a maraca-shaking Banhart.

The freewheelin' spirit is mirrored in his lyrics, too. At one point he sang the gorgeous, smoky "Freely" featuring the line "There's only one way to shine/It's trying to live freely." ("Not to be …

Bay View's the place to be this weekend, thanks to the Bay View Bash on Saturday and the Global Union Festival -- presented by Alverno College -- on Saturday and Sunday from noon until 7 p.m. in Humboldt Park.

Eight bands will travel from all over the globe -- including Germany, Nigeria, Vietnam and Iran -- to meet in Milwaukee for this free music festival.

Last year's debut event received incredible reviews and tons of praise from the community. Hence, Alverno College's David Ravel knew this was going to be a successful annual gig.

"We were blown away by the response to last year's festival," says Ravel. "Let's face it -- first year out, and understandably, nobody quite knows who we are.  Still, we had a county sheriff estimate of over 6,000 attending over that weekend.  And now that we're more of a known quantity and the buzz is out there, we're getting ready for a really big show."

"World Music" has the connotation of having a specific sound, but in the case of this festival, the term is used to describe boundary-less music from many different genres originating in places all over the map.

To get an idea of what to expect, here's a brief description of the bands.

17 Hippies, a band from Germany, opens the festival with its eclectic mix of Eastern melodies, Balkan rhythms, French chanson, Anglo song writing and Cajun tunes. Vietnam's Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le Quartet play traditional Vietnamese music. Lekan Babalola from Nigeria delivers vibrant jazz, and Zemog El Gallo Bueno plays modern Latin music.

Haale, a female musician from Iran whose style is described as "Psychedelic Sufi Trance Rock," will start off on Sunday with her signature sound that evokes both the spiritual and traditional culture of her parents' homeland of Iran, as well as the energy of psychedelic rock and roll from New York City, where she was born.

Also on deck for Sunday is Turkish clarinet virtuoso Ismail Lumanovski and The NY Gypsy All-Stars from Macedonia, Cuba…

The past couple of years, I conducted an informal sociological study of how strangers treat me based on my hairstyle. I didn't set out to do this, but being a person who switches hairdos with the frequency most people change light bulbs, I couldn't help but to notice the differences in behavior.

Let me start out by saying the only reason I am able to modify my hairstyle so often is because my best friend Renee is a stylist, and whenever we get together, it usually includes a bottle of wine and a salon-like experience in my very own kitchen.

So, here's the rundown of my most-recent hairstyles, and how they were publicly received:

Dreadlocks: My dreads were professionally done at a salon on the North Side of Milwaukee by a lovely French-speaking West African woman, and after 10 hours of twisting, they looked pretty good (as opposed to those uneven, matted dreads White folks usually end up with). I think the dreads made me feel extra folksy, because I have never been so chatty -- or well received -- in public as I was with the dreads. Wherever I went, people asked me about them, and I got into a number of interesting conversations with strangers while simply standing in line at Target or whatever. However, the dreads drove me nuts eventually, because I felt like I couldn't really "wash" my hair. Hence, at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve two years ago, Renee lopped them off and shaved my head down to a shadow of hair.

Shaved Head: This was interesting and fun, because I got a lot more public attention from lesbians than I normally do. It was very flattering. Especially for someone who, at the time, was still carrying around an extra 10-15 pounds of baby weight and not feeling much like a hottie.

Mohawk: This was definitely the least popular 'do among the masses. I had wanted a mohawk since the '80s, when I saw Annabella Lwin wearing one on the cover of a Bow Wow Wow record. So, two decades later, I went for it. Most people see a mohawk and the…

For those of us who have lived in Milwaukee our whole lives, it's difficult to go into public without seeing someone we know. Personally, I have lived within one square mile for most of my life -- and have held a series of high-profile jobs --  so anonymity is even more challenging.

Much of the time, I love seeing people I know in public. Milwaukee offers a "small town" feeling even though it's a medium-sized city, and that has always been very appealing to me. Sometimes, however, I just want to run to the grocery store wearing my dorky glasses and not run into anyone. Inevitably, I always do.

Maybe I should save this question for the Sunday Sound-off, but In such cases, is it OK to pretend not to see someone? I don't mean to completely blow them off, but let's say you think you see someone you know in the frozen foods, and you decide to avoid that section for a while, just so you don't have to chat it up.

Do humans have an unspoken understanding that sometimes we just can't acknowledge each other because we just don't have the energy for small talk?

I admit, I have done this, and I have experienced the other end of it too. Usually I attempt to be friendly, outgoing and enthusiastic in public, especially when "bumping into" people I don't know very well or haven't see in a while But sometimes I just want to blend into the crowd, be the proverbial wallflower, slip away into the daylight unnoticed.