An insurgent blend of rock, rumba, soul and traditional grooves.
Including never-before-released recordings by legends like Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver
Mtukudzi, amongst many others.

Dazzling, smash-hit, fully-fledged blend of flamenco, reggaeton and post-Timbaland r&b, with a Middle Eastern flavour to the singing. It’s the re-telling of a medieval story about a woman locked in a tower by her husband, and her escape. There’s even an Arthur Russell sample.
Lost in the Christmas rush here, but so nice we’re serving it twice.

From 1971, A Guitar in the Foreground is Rosinha’s best record. Classic, chilled Bossa shot through with her scintillating guitar-playing.
Check this version of Summertime for her instrumental virtuosity. (Tyler, the Creator burglarised it for Tomorrow, on Chromakopia.)

‘Barely disco and hardly jazz, Rupa Biswas’ 1982 LP is the halfway point between Bollywood and Balearic. Tracked in Calgary’s Living Room Studios with a crack team of Indian and Canadian studio rats alike, Disco Jazz is a perfect fusion of East and West; sarod and synthesizer intricately weaving around one another for thirty-seven transcendent minutes, culminating in the viral hit Aaj Shanibar.’

Aka SJOB Movement, spun out of Sonny Okosuns’ set-up: Samuel ‘Spark’ Abiloye, Johnnie Woode Olimah, Ehima ‘Blackie’ Ottah and Prince Bolarinwa Agba.
Militant funk, deep and rootsy.

Gorgeous, lilting Palm Wine classics from the venerable Sierra Leonean.

A thought-provoking, deeply enjoyable consideration of displacement and dislocation, and abiding but adaptive cultural memory, this fourth collaboration mashes expert, haunting samples of the classical Iranian pop of greats like Andy, Hayedeh, and Fereydoun Farrokhzad into tough, quick-fire beat-downs.

Joyful rug-cutters and sweet soul-uplifters from the town of Morogoro, in early-1960s Tanzania: muziki wa dansi, inspired by Cuban 78s, and dance crazes like the twist and cha cha cha, but making them its own. Here is the cream of over a hundred recordings by Salum, mostly for Mzuri Records of Kenya; pretty much lost till now.
In an old-school tip-on cover, with lyrics in Swahili and English on the inner sleeve.
Lovely stuff.

Classic Latin soul, following up Watermelon Man, co-written by Pat Patrick from the Arkestra. (Subsequently a massive UK hit for Georgie Fame, using Jon Hendricks’ lyrics, arranged by Tubby Hayes.) Both sides, failsafe boogaloo destroyers.

A thrilling, Sudanese, seventies blend of funk and soul jazz, with hot brass and organ, breaks and beats, even a shot of highlife. Nile Waves is knockout — as if the JBs fetched up in Khartoum.

Seven songs by Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi, rootsily mystical and vividly al fresco, spiralling from peripheral sites beside rubbish dumps and rice fields, into a busy market at the heart of Yogyakarta, from dawn till dusk.

The magic moments of Sharam Shabpareh, front-man of Iranian garage legends The Rebels. ‘Blurting horns, evil bass grooves, cheesy organs, a thick strata of percussion going off like microwave popcorn.’

An astounding compilation of the breakneck Shangaan dance output of the Nozinja studio in Soweto, recorded between 2006 and 2009.