The Sulayiti Kalungi Ensemble Of Kampala presenting dances, religious invocations and profane songs, to a barrage of percussion and fervent choral singing.

The last living master of surti singing, a precursor of the ancient Islamic devotional music of qawwali. Wonderful.

Shashmaqom trio improvisation from Uzbekistan, artful and serious: heartfelt singing and fine tanbur lute playing, set off by the accompaniment of dutor and rabob lutes, and doyra percussion.

Deeply moving singing from Ferghana in Central Asia — classical, slow, suspenseful and meditative in a world of pain — accompanied by lutes, chang (a psaltery), nay flute, dayera tambourine, and ghijak spike fiddle.

Besides all-new recordings, this features two fond souvenirs from Valle’s late-seventies sojourn in California, out of reach of the military dictatorship at home: Feels So Good, a precious two-step collaboration with Leon Ware, initiated in 1979 but unfinished till now; and a fresh version of Life Is What It Is, sunny AOR disco originally written for the Chicago 13 album, now with upped tempo and a deeper groove.
The rhythm section is Alex Malheiros and Renato Massa, from Azymuth, and percussionist Ian Moreira.

The master accordionist of Colombia’s Musica Tropical movement.

The joropo, pasaje and tonada (with roots in sixteenth-century Spain) played on the bandola, a pear-shaped, four-stringed guitar, made from cedar — with maracas and cuatro accompaniment.

From the Central Coast, afro music for rites and festivals, sharing with salsa drums like the cumaco (using the heel of the hand to vary pitch) and redondo, besides cow horns, car wheels, plates, sea shells.

Refined, improvisatory, endangered traditional music for a quartet of two-stringed spike-fiddle, zither, two lutes.