Various songs — and valiha zither, made from a bamboo trunk, the sodina flute, the angorodao accordion, the kabosy lute, and the amponga tany, a ground zither made of plant rope, wood, and shit.

Deep, rough, hypnotic recordings of the Fulani lute (and singing), made by this inspirational French label around Douentza and Bamako, Mali, between 2002-2004.

Bele is an African folk drumming and singing tradition running back to slavery days. Mondesir leads five singers, with two percussionists, on tambour and tibwa.

The ravanne is a large drum — a goatskin stretched over a wooden frame — played with the hands, emblematic of the Creole cultural heritage on this island in the Indian Ocean: the music here is fabulous.

Double-headed drums, horns and shells, guitars and violins, reed flutes and cascabeles whirled together in festive and ritualistic dance music, an amazing mixture of indian-Mexico and Spanish Middle Ages.

Rough, rousing gospel recorded live in 1987 by the seventy-nine-year-old (who came through busking in Washington DC). Mostly traditional songs, with Flora’s full-flavoured singing self-accompanied on slide, and extra guitar backing by Eleanor Ellis.

Bardic epics and nomadic songs, with dombra lute accompaniment.

Instrumental music from the north: like the hunting bow, made from wild vine and the tendon of an antelope, struck with a stick or a porcupine spine. One end goes in the performer’s mouth, which makes a resonator.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

The eighteenth-century poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai as celebrated nightly by waee faqirs, whose penetrating lutes and high whirling voices bridge musical and mystical experience.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.