His fine guitar-picking and upbeat, carefree songs brought George Sibanda from Bulawayo the fame throughout southern Africa — and he was versioned in the US — which drove him to drink and an early grave.

Kora and cello interplay.

Four members of Sonny Okosun’s band, edging things on in 1974: deep, spacey afro-funk.

‘SK Kakraba is a master of the gyil xylophone — fourteen wooden slats strung across calabash resonators. The silk walls of spiders’ egg sacs — ‘paapieye’ in the Lobi language — are stretched across holes in the gourds, giving each note a buzzy rattle. SK learned as a child from elders in his Lobi community in the far northwest reaches of Ghana.’
Beautiful, spare, mesmeric recordings — song cycles, dirges, improvisations based on traditional songs, original compositions — newly made.

Superb, timber-shivering example of the city’s more elevated style of fado. Highly recommended.

Thirty-five stingers from an HMV run of more than four hundred 78s, recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid-1930s till the mid-1950s.

The second half of the CD.

Fine Malian blues, with contributions from Ali Farka Toure.

A miraculous bouquet of gagaku, shakuhachi, shamisen, storytelling, folksong and more, including the first commercial recordings in Asia.

Ritual music from Tamil country performed by nagasvaram oboes, tavil drums, talam castanets, and droning harmonium, or sruti petti (without a keyboard, powered by bellows).

Deeply moving violin-playing, unfolding and illuminating the emotional twists and turns of a single, hour-long raga.

Based on the raga and pan, these short hymns to Shiva, performed by the oduvar cantors, are sung at daily rituals and for calendar feasts in temples of Tamil Nadu.

Ragas with intensely controlled and expressive singing from South India, in the uncommon, neglected Carnatic tradition.