World Music Network

Appia Kwa Bridge is Ebo Taylor's latest album in which he collaborates with the Afrobeat Academy from Berlin. Although Ebo is especially known for Afrobeat, in Appia Kwa Bridge he explores rootsier highlife music. The album was released 30th of April 2012 on Strut.

Hommage à Ole Bull (2011 ECM Records) with Nils Økland (violin) and Sigbjørn Apeland (piano) is a work of supreme tranquility and subtle Norwegian undertones.

Emily Portman is a singer, writer and concertina player from Glastonbury, hailed one of the new British folk scene’s most beguiling presences.

Another, perhaps more 'traditionally' Swedish band is Kraja, a group from the North of Sweden.

First Aid Kit are two sisters, Swedish, last name Söderberg.

Galician singer Uxía is deeply rooted in her native Galicia, but she always ventures out into the world for inspiration.

Simply calling 'Soul is Heavy' “political” would reduce the gravity of an album in which the political and personal are knit from the same elegiac quilt, and in which the production is so varied, nuanced, and intrepid, it’s little wonder Nneka has been compared to Lauryn Hill.

The exquisite precision of the ensemble playing is breathtaking.

If they weren't stranded in refugee camps in the desert in south-west Algeria, Tiris would surely be one of the success stories of north Africa.

With sharp packaging and lots of obscurities, it's a magnificent cumbiapedia.

Not so much a showcase for Baloji as a reminder of Congo's magnificent and varied musical history

This dozen-strong group have a varied repertoire of spectacular throat singing – both the growly kind and the ethereal, shimmering variety – and instrumental playing.

The Cambodian Space Project are a band from Phnom Penh, with Khmer, Australian, French and US members playing revitalized Cambodian hits from the 1960s and 70s as well as their own songs.

On ‘Sem Nostalgia’ Lucas Santtana has re-imagined the sonic possibilities of acoustic guitars and voices to create a modern electro-acoustic masterpiece that introduces a powerful new song-writing talent.

The best tracks are those where Shankar takes chances, matching uninhibited sitar improvisation against flamenco percussion and the furious, inspired piano work of Pedro Ricardo Miño on the thrilling 'Buleria Con Ricardo', or backing the passionate singing of 'Duquende' or more thoughtful 'Concha Buika'.

It's a credit to Damon Albarn's reinvention of himself as a musical polymath that he can announce a project as bold as this – bringing a stellar cast of dance and hip-hop producers to the Democratic Republic of Congo to collaborate with local musicians – and it almost feels like business as usual. "Is that all?" you're tempted to ask. He's not even going to convert the results into the Pelog scale and stage it as an opera? Underwater? Dude's slacking off.

From a remarkably youthful beginning, Will Holland has been startlingly omnivorous in his musical tastes. Operating as Quantic, his talents as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, tunesmith and all-round maven have produced a hugely impressive body of work. Now, after a decade’s output for the Tru Thoughts label, it’s time to celebrate that accomplishment.

The first CD release by norient and Outhere Records focuses on a young generation of musicians from Beirut that is tired of war, fed up with politics, sick of religious madness, and angry about Euro-American exoticism.

A perfect blend between the purest West African tradition and the sound of bold innovation, Sona Jobarteh’s 'Fasiya' takes the musical expertise of this female kora virtuoso to a whole new level.