Fabulous big-band tropical jazz — cumbias, porros — from 1950s and 60s Colombia.

Moody, experimental, Ghanaian Afro-Rock — recorded by these teenagers in 1973 for EMI Nigeria, after a run at Fela’s Shrine.

Hotly recommended! Islam Chipsy’s debut studio album, recorded late last year in downtown Cairo. Four jolts of wild creativity and pure exhilaration — the trolleying frenzy of Trinity and Kahraba sandwiching his inimitable readings of the Egyptian standards Simsimiyya (from the north-eastern Nile delta) and Mouled Saidi (from Upper Egypt).

Startling, brilliant, minimalist experiments for percussion and electronics. Issued by Ayna as a tiny private pressing in 1972; re-mastered now from EM’s own master-tapes. Daring fun; warmly recommended.

Created in collaboration with Walter Branchi from the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, this soundtrack to Mino Guerrini’s 1968 film is among the most strikingly experimental of all Macchi’s music for cinema. A suspenseful, jet-propelled fresh mix of
psychedelia, jazz, and improv, threaded with beautiful melodies.
The first time out; from the master tapes.

Epic poetry wrapped up in the rabab viol (a coconut shell covered with fish skin, with a long, spiked handle, two horsehair strings), the vertical suffara flute, the arghul double clarinet, droning and melodious.

Intense Moroccan singer improvisatorially lighting up the rare, refined nineteenth century wasla style, in suite form, with chamber orchestra — qanun zither, ud lute, kaman violin and riqq percussion.

The ‘little devil’ was born in Tunis in 1884 to a Libyan mother and Moroccan dad. The first half of the twentieth century was a golden era in Tunisian music; Cheikh El Afrite its most celebrated artist. As a youngster he became fluent in its mix of classical Arab-Andalous and Ottoman traditions with folk idioms like bedouin and other African melodies, fondo and fezzani, and the festive tripolitain music of Libya. Turning professional at eighteen, he was soon singing for the bey every Tuesday night, at his seaside palace in Hammam Lif. Later, his recordings made him star throughout the Maghreb.

Scintillating Senegalese finger-picking.

Raw, rocking cannibalisations of Yemeni folk — with dashes of dabke, trance and Mulatu Astatke — at moments using junk made to sound like age-old lutes and percussion.

The second volume in Abdou’s unmissable Nuits trio of LPs, this time featuring his Casablanca home-girl, sahrawi diva Naima Samih.

Giddy psych, funk, jazz and electronica freak-outs from Casablanca. A combination of original compositions and folk tunes, crazily blending together Abdou’s wigging organ, rough beat boxes, wayward kit-drumming and crisp north African percussion, a little Hank Marvin and some sporting sing-a-long, and plenty of unfit-to-drive reverb and tape delay. A facsimile reissue of this collectors’ item, first out in 1976. Ace.

Initially the Moonrakers, formed in Kanu in 1968, by Steve Black, Rocky Mustapha, Tony Nosika and Frank Martins. This is their swansong, a decade later: irie Afro-disco.