‘The city of Belém, in the Northern state of Para in Brazil, has long been a hotbed of culture and musical innovation. Enveloped by the mystical wonder of the Amazonian forest and overlooking the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, its Amerindians, Europeans and Africans pioneered musical genres such as Carimbó, Samba-De-Cacete, Siriá, Bois-Bumbás and bambiá.
‘There was a radio station, a recording studio, a music label and a deep, cross-genre roster of artists. Beginning as simple gramophones connected to loudspeakers tied to lamp posts or trees, the aparelhagem sonora of Belém evolved into sophisticated setups, drawing thousands of revelers.
‘The music and tales found in Jambu are stories of resilience, triumph against all odds, and, most importantly, of a city at the edge of the Amazon which has always known how to throw a damn good party.’

‘The area’s best club music from the mid-‘70s, an exuberant, carnival-esque mishmash of local carimbó and siriá styles with big-band brass and frenetic Afro-Latino percussion. Best of all there are the three hip-swivelling cuts by Pinduca, founding father of lambada and king of Carimbó’ (Q).

Magnificent Wolof drum music, performed by an extended griot family in the mystical setting of Lac Rose, outside Dakar.
Doudou Ndiaye Rose — who died in 2015 —  is a key drummer in the musical history of the world. He developed a system of five hundred original drumming patterns, ancient and new. Amongst the modern rhythms here is Bench Mi — ‘under the Baobab tree,’ a spot where where problems get solved.  Also Hibar Yi — ‘passing on information’ — the theme-tune of Senegalese TV national news for decades — and Les Rosettes, the signature rhythm of Senegal’s first ever all-female percussion group, convened by Doudou, and named after his grandmother.
These original compositions sit alongside important traditional rhythms, familiar to every Sabar player, such as Farwu Jar ( a courtship game sometimes resulting in a wedding), Ceebu Jin (also the name of the national dish of fish and rice), and Gumbé, often played after a successful harvest.
Recorded in joyful single takes, over seven consecutive days in February 2020, with no overdubs, mastered by Rashad Becker, the music is deep and thrilling, polyrhythmic to the bone, with a complex, pointillistic intensity at times evoking Jeff Mills in full flight.

Stunningly modernised Tsogho ritual music from the interior forest of Gabon.
Beaten rattles, synths, Bwiti harp, male-female dialogical singing.
Released in 1989, to the intense consternation of purists; never before available outside Gabon.
Game-changing, and as authentic as it gets; warmly recommended.

Sixteen wonders from the first three years of Franco’s own imprint Les Editions Populaires, founded in 1968. Mostly OK Jazz, performing ravishing rumbas and bolero ballads in Lingala, traditional songs in Kikongo, Kimongo, and even Yoruba, collaborations with Ngoma artists Camille Feruzi and Manuel d’Oliveira, and their own tough take on US funk.
Glorious music. Bim.

His first two, liberating, aching, rawly beautiful LPs: Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman from 1958, and Tomorrow Is the Question! The New Music of Ornette Coleman, from 1959.
With Don Cherry, Walter Norris, bassist Don Payne, Billy Higgins; Don Cherry, Shelly Manne, Percy Heath / Red Mitchell.

Two teenagers’ amapiano music from Gauteng province in South Africa, drawing on jazz, folk, afro, deep and tech house, kwaito, and dibacardi… but sounding like none of them.

The out-of-this-world recordings of Dilson de Souza, leading a kind of tropical chamber jazz on leaves from a ficus tree.
Dilson was from Barra do Pirai, in the Brazilian countryside; moving to Rio as a young man, where he worked in construction. He recorded his first record in 1954, for RCA Victor. He travelled to Quito around 1957, soon hooking up with Benitez & Valencia, who introduced him to the CAIFE label.
Dilson played the leaf open, resting on his tongue, hands free, with his mouth as the resonator. Though a leaf can also be played rolled or folded in half, this method allowed for more precision, a tethered brilliance. A picked ficus leaf stays fresh, crisp and clean-toned for around ten hours. He could play eight compositions, four at each end, before it was spent.
Biluka plays trills and vibratos effortlessly, with utterly pure pitch, acrobatically sliding into notes and changing tone on the fly. In Manuco, he leads Los Caníbales into a mysterious landscape on a rope pulled from an Andean spaghetti western, and corrals and teases them into a dialogue. A leaf, a harp, a xylophone, and a rondador — joined in Bailando Me Despido (Dancing As I Say Goodbye) by a saucy organ, doing sloshed call-and-response. In Anacu de Mi Guambra,  Biluka shows his full range of antics, hiccuping melodically over a set of magic tricks. His expressiveness was boundless.
The eucalyptus leaf is popular among Aboriginal Australians. In China, they’ve played leaves for 10,000 years. In Cambodia, people play the slek, a leaf plucked from either the sakrom or the khnoung tree. But ain’t nobody like Biluka, ever.
Astounding music.

The trumpeter in peak form, leading a crack band through extended versions of CTI killers like Povo and First Light.
Kent Brinkley and Michael Carvin from Hugh Masekela’s band; George Cables from Child’s Dance and Capra Black; Horace Silver’s saxophonist Junior Cook, playing with surprising intensity.
Recorded in 1973 for French radio.

For Michael Carvin — who in the next couple of years would play on Pharoah Sanders’ Elevation LP, and Lonnie Liston Smith’s Expansions — the session was something else: ‘I felt that we were being used by a higher force. That’s the first time we played that way, and it was the last time we played that way. We actually got the lightning in a bottle, we caught the magic… we caught it.’

Moritz from Basic Channel and Rhythm And Sound, alongside Vladislav Delay (Chain Reaction) and Max Loderbauer (Sahko): a dream crossing of classic Berlin techno, On-The-Corner Miles, Larry Heard, and Can.