CARRBORO - Suppose you start at the Carrboro Town Commons today at about 6 p.m. and set out on a leisurely walk east on Weaver Street through downtown.

You'll begin your journey accompanied by the roots rock of Luego, whose veteran lineup includes Peter Holsapple of R.E.M. and the dBs. Cross at the light, and before you get very far the rock beat will fade, replaced by the pure bluegrass of the Sigmon Singers performing in front of The Advocate. Listen for a while and wander on. The fiddle and vocals will drift away, giving way to the swelling downbeat electronica of Gut Lightning just a few doors down.

Keep going. By the time you pass the Century Center and Weaver Street Market and wind up at The ArtsCenter, you'll have heard, among other things, soulful R&B, 1920s-style jazz and swing, folk rock, psychedelic hip-hop, jump blues, crunchy neo-pop and world beat.

And that's just during a single half-hour of the daylong Carrboro Music Festival, which goes on today throughout downtown. The 12th annual edition of the free celebration features more than 170 different acts playing at 24 venues, including a few actual stages, but also front porches, parking lots, art galleries, restaurants and patches of grass.

"This is the most incredible music event that I've been involved with during my 30-year career in and around music," said festival coordinator Gerry Williams. "Unlike many aspects of the music business, this is entirely about celebrating our community and its music. The range and quality of what we see and hear each year is simply amazing."

With nearly 200 performances on tap in town today, it's impossible, of course, to highlight all of them. Here's a very small, random sample:

•Funktion, which plays at 1:15 p.m. at Fifth Season, is based in Durham but has a Tar Heel pedigree: saxophonist Brannon Bollinger and bass player Jeremy Boomhower graduated in the same class from the UNC Music Department, and drummmer Gary Mitchell spent two years on the drumkit for the Carolina basketball pep band.

The guys in the band will be busy today; every one of them will play more than once, in various combinations; Bollinger and Jeremy, for example, will also play with Spoonful of Soul and Skippy Skip.

Funktion plays mostly jazz/funk fusion, and spices that up with other odds and ends, including some ska and Latin beats.

"We're an eclectic group with tremendously varied backgrounds," Bollinger said. "But we bring it all together for the common cause of funk, groove and shaking booties."

•The Crowd Scene, playing at 3 p.m. at Open Eye Café, has seen a lot of the world: American expat Anne Rogers and London native Grahame Davies formed the band about 10 years ago in London, but they have since crossed the Atlantic and are now based in Arlington, Va., where they picked up drummer Evan Pollack. They've logged thousands of miles touring the U.K. and the U.S., but this is their visit to Carrboro.

"We play some kind of indie rock folk singer songwriter pop mélange that has been likened to The Kinks, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, The Left Banke, Let's Active, and any number of other people we aren't worthy to be mentioned in the same paragraph with," Davies said.

•The Darnell Woodies, from Winston-Salem, got together last year with a lineup that includes musicians from backgrounds ranging from old-time to jazz to punk.

"We consider ourselves an Appalachian punk band," said vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Matt Smith. "I know that's hip, not to categorize yourself, but you gotta work with people. ... A lot of different people like us: punks, old-time fans, bluegrass people, rock people, rockabilly people and party people."

The released their first CD in June. The Woodies were voted best band in the Winston-Salem Journal Readers Choice Poll.

"Next year we hope to be voted best casual dining," Smith said.

They'll play at Open Eye at 9 p.m.

•Tokyo Rosenthal is probably the only Chapel Hillian with a key to Alberta, Canada; he was presented with that honor for his song "Edmonton," off his CD "One Score and Ten."

He's new to this area, actually, having moved here only recently. The move lets him work with producer Chris Stamey.

He got his start in country rock and says his sound has since evolved to "rootsy Americana with a little blues thrown in." It's a sound he's developed over three decades on stages in Japan, Europe, Canada and across the U.S.

Today he'll play twice: at 2:30 p.m. at the N.C. Songwriters Stage at Southern Rail restaurant, and at 6:15 at The Station.

•The Raleigh-based Atomic Rhythm All-Stars are a seven-piece band that plays jazz from the 1920s and '30s -- the way it was meant to be played.

"In my 16 or so years as a professional musician, it has been my experience that most bands that do 'early jazz' use the wrong arrangements, period-incorrect technique on the instrument, a later harmonic vocabulary, and in general miss the boat completely," said George Knott, the band's leader, arranger and bass player. "I knew if I could get together the right players who had a firm understanding of pre-swing jazz, we could do the music justice."

He spent years studying vintage arrangements and listening to original 78-rpm records. He found the musicians he was looking for, and the band has been playing about three years. They'll be at The ArtsCenter at 6 p.m.