‘From the trios of pianists Kyle Shepherd, Bokani Dyer and Yonela Mnana, to the genre-defying exploits of guitarists Vuma Levin and Reza Khota; and from artists inspired by age-old traditions, like Lwanda Gogwana and Mandisi Dyantyis, to the cosmic explorations of Siya Makuzeni, Benjamin Jephta, Thandi Ntuli, Zoë Modiga and Shane Cooper’s Mabuta’  — Johannesburg label Afrosynth rounds up some of SA’s most talented young composers and bandleaders, as well as a wider cast of supporting musicians.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Diop was celebrated in Senegal for her taasu, a form of oral poetry spoken call-and-response by griot women to the rhythmic accompaniment of sabar and tama drums. Then, in 1994, she dropped this incendiary combination of taasu and her own stripped, super-charged conception of mbalax…

‘Paul Ngozi’s debut album of rawly intense proto-punk and garage Zamrock, featuring Chrissy Zebby Tembo. From 1976, the same year as Lazy Bones!! by Witch, and Rikki Ililonga’s Zambia, ushering in the golden era of Zamrock and trailering a dozen Paul Ngozi and Ngozi Family releases, bestride funk and punk, driving hard rock and Zambian folk melodies and rhythms.’

Rugged songs with gurumi lute accompaniment to celebrate the opening of the bush, summon genies, honour animals and praise huntsmen.

Music for spirit possession ceremonies, performed on the goge, a bowed single-string spike-fiddle — a half-calabash covered in iguana skin, with a wooden neck, and a string made of bunched horsehair.

Sexy and ardent, this is great fun.

Masterful performances of two ragas. Liquid, luminous, swinging.

The sitar maestro recorded in 1986, performing two raga and a dhun in the classical style of the Senia Beenkar Gharana, with its focus on melodic and rhythmic elaboration.

Kushal Das is a master of the surbahar, a kind of bass sitar, with long sustain, ideally suited to this profound and elevated, tricky and subtle, darkest-night raga, recorded in concert at the Radio France Auditorium in Paris.

The singer Yu Ji-suk, with a 10-piece ensemble of choir and percussion, performing the Seodo Sori repertoire of the north-west provinces. Nostalgic, dynamic folk songs, rooted in everyday life.