*** 1/2 MICHELLE SHOCKED, “Arkansas Traveler” <i> Mercury</i>

Travel is a waste if the feet move but the mind stands still. On her fourth album, Shocked goes searching for musical folkways by recruiting 14 different star-studded, tradition-minded ad-hoc bands in 13 different cities and towns. It could have been a recipe for genre-hopping gimmickry, but Shocked travels with purpose.

She’s not just out to join the likes of Doc Watson, Taj Mahal, Pops Staples, Gatemouth Brown, Alison Krauss and Hothouse Flowers for a sampling of their respective idioms. Instead, her songs raise fundamental questions about how communities cohere, how culture and personal experience get passed along and what the musician’s role in that might be.

The journey proceeds out of modern confusion as Shocked, playing fetching contemporary folk-pop, traverses Los Angeles’ urban grid in “Come a Long Way,” making little sense of its disconnected, unstable jumble. Forthwith, she lets geography and style take her to earlier times and smaller, simpler places, the better to think things through.

Avoiding nostalgic bliss, Shocked remains alert to the fundamental sadness of life, as well as the racism and sexual double standards woven into the traditions she explores. But in her travels she never loses sight of the need for humor and fun, the value of storytelling and the sheer pleasure that comes when great players start fiddlin’ around.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).