Originally organized by ex-slaves fleeing the Haitian Revolution, only two Tumba Francesa survive in Cuba nowadays, combining African drums and French patois.

From 1961, featuring Charlie Rouse… though the stand-out is Just A Gigolo, by Monk solo.

‘Wild songs’ (without words), sophisticated choral singing, improvisations, pastorals and newer song forms.

Erik Marchand singing, with his accompanist Thierry Robin finding the ud better suited than guitar or mandolin to the intervalic arrangements of quarter tones peculiar to this repertoire.

Another knockout compilation by Born Bad (though Souffle Continu has the matter in hand).

‘In 1969, the Art Ensemble of Chicago arrived at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier in Paris and a new fuse was lit. Their multi-instrumentalism made use of a varied multiplicity of ‘little instruments’ (including bicycle bells, wind chimes, steel drums, vibraphone and djembe: they left no stone unturned), which they employed according to their inspirations. The group’s stage appearance shocked as well. They wore boubous (traditional African robes) and war paint to venerate the power of their free, hypnotic music, directly linked to their African roots. They were predestined to meet up with the Saravah record label (founded in 1965 by Pierre Barouh), already at the vanguard of as-yet unnamed world music. Brigitte Fontaine’s album Comme à la Radio, recorded in 1970 after a series of concerts at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, substantiated the union of this heiress to the poetic and politically committed chanson francaise (Magny, Ferré, Barbara) together with the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s voodoo jazz and the Arab tradition perpetuated by her companion Areski Belkacem…’

In 1979, just after the release of Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, Messina was asked to perform at the Teatro Quartiere in Milan.
‘Due to the limited availability of key technical features, ’ he recalls, ‘it would have been too complicated to perform Prati Bagnati, and therefore I opted for these three pieces instead. We had never actually tried them all together, so I thought about renting a recording studio the previous afternoon. In that way, we could rehearse in a suitable place and use the opportunity to record the music on tape.’
The music has an unadorned, almost improvisational feel, skewered by passages of arpeggiated, meditative piano. Its chords layered and unfurled in real time via a reel-to-reel tape machine, the track Reflex recalls Steve Reich’s mesmeric phase-shifting works of the 1960s.

A fresh, engaging compilation, spanning 1978-1988: a decentred, porous map of the Gallic musical scene during the Sono Mondial era, running routes from the suburbs of Paris to and from the French Caribbean Antilles and throughout the African diaspora; and revelling in the new general access to electronic instruments like synthesizers and drum machines.