Wewantsounds continues its Middle East reissue series with Assa’d Khoury’s 1978 rarity, Electronic Touches Belly Dance. Reissued for the first time in nearly 50 years in partnership with Byblos Records founder Mozart Chahine, the album features Oriental classics reimagined through Khoury’s pioneering funky, electronic keyboards together with the monster breakbeat of cult track "Al Ghaba." This definitive edition includes original artwork, remastered audio, a new introduction by Ahmed Khalil (Dikraphone), and an exclusive interview with Chahine conducted by Mario Choueiry (IMA).

Purbayan Chatterjee, one of India’s most celebrated and exploratory modern sitarists, and five-time GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist, composer, and producer Mark Lettieri (Snarky Puppy) have announced their collaborative debut album Feathered Creatures, set for release on June 5. Throughout the new project, the duo channel their masterful musicianship into a bold new sonic territory – forging a dynamic dialogue between progressive Indian classical sitar and electric guitar. Feathered Creatures is an artistic team-up crafting new and exciting sounds out of pure skillful collaboration, the result of true cross-continental creative kismet.

Grammy-nominated Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist Fatoumata Diawara returns in 2026 with MASSA, her most personal work to date. Introspective and powerful, the album explores motherhood, faith, memory, and resilience, transforming intimate reflection into universal storytelling. Through these songs, Fatoumata invites listeners, of all backgrounds, to embrace gratitude and accept that destiny is an inevitable part of the human journey. The album also carries a moving tribute to her late father, whose love continues to guide her beyond his passing.

Parallel Universe – Volume 1 marks the latest collaboration between Natacha Atlas and Samy Bishai — a bold reimagining of the musical crossroads between East and West. While its textures echo retro-futurism and electronic lineage, the spirit of the record is unmistakably present-tense — rooted in a boldly contemporary vision of Arabic pop, refracted through experimental production.

From soulful Sahara blues to mesmerizing mbira melodies from Zimbabwe, African Sojourn offers an expansive yet intimate journey across a continent rich with music and culture. Putumayo's latest African collection brings together singer-songwriters and troubadours from north to south, east to west, who, despite their diversity, share songs united by enchanting melodies, soulful rhythms and rich storytelling. Singing a wide array of languages and performing with local acoustic instruments such as the kora, balafón and mbira, these exceptional artists share stories of love, land, identity, and resilience that are rooted in local traditions yet open to the world.

When Khalab and Baba Sissoko first recorded together in 2015, they produced something definitive: a record where electronics and griot tradition achieved genuine synthesis rather than polite cohabitation. Not layered genres maintaining separate identities, but two forms evolving into something singular. "Tata" took Track of the Year at the 2016 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards, found champions in Laurent Garnier, Ben UFO, Matthew Dear, Bonobo, and many others — but more significantly, it established a working method built to last.

With over 20 million albums sold worldwide and a Grammy® win for Best World Music Album, Gipsy Kings bring their globally lauded legacy to Historia. Inspired by childhood memories of family gatherings and community celebrations, Historia captures the timeless spirit, energy and passion that has defined their sound for decades. Historia is a vibrant journey through the rich rhythms and soulful melodies of Gipsy culture. Blending flamenco guitars, joyful choruses, and lively dance rhythms, the album celebrates music, tradition, and togetherness.

Bambaraoui performs both entirely traditional songs from the Gnawa and hunter music repertoires, most lying at the intersection of the two, but with new arrangements. The music also ventures into blues, funk, and modern dance music styles that, in one way or another, have their origins in West Africa. Bambaraoui is a journey into the past, the present, and into the future.

On that evening in Paris, the mikes were on – to conclude a partnership between the Arte Flamenco Festival and Scala Music – but above all, they were awaiting ‘elevation’, the “duende” (a heightened state of expression or emotion) which played its part in the jam-packed auditorium. Rafael Riqueni performed his entire body of work, spanning almost forty years of composition, presented chronologically.

"Tussen zonnen en manen" is a musical album created by the Belgian ensemble Toasaves together with composer and multi—instrumentalist Dick van der Harst.

Amsterdam-based Ghanaian trumpeter, composer and bandleader Berima Amo blends highlife, Afrobeat, traditional West African rhythms, jazz and soul into a rich, contemporary sound. Rhythms of Love is a heartfelt tribute to the music and icons that shaped his journey-exploring love, unity and cultural pride through hypnotic grooves, expressive trumpet lines and soulful melodies. Bridging tradition and innovation, the album celebrates African musical heritage while carrying it boldly into the future.

Marisa Anderson’s music transcends borders.The topography of her work interrogates the intersections of artistry and expression with form and tradition. A singular guitarist and voracious musical collaborator, Anderson crafts pieces bursting with equal parts reverence and curiosity, contouring familiar shapes into work that is wholly her own. Anderson has spent decades mining the veins of the complicated, interconnected American folk traditions she was steeped in from a young age, stretching beyond those traditions and incorporating the vocabulary and techniques of vernacular and folk musics from across time and beyond boundary into her work. Eschewing replication or revival, Anderson’s music lives in conversation with tradition. “My approach to tradition is with the hands that I have and the history that I have,” notes Anderson. “In that way it’s a collaboration–you don’t go into collaboration trying to play like the other person, you go in trying to find out how to play together.”

Le Grand Tango is a seminal 1982 composition by Argentine master Astor Piazzolla, which has been newly arranged and recorded by the Quinteto Astor Piazzolla on their official 2026 self-titled album, Le Grand Tango.

One World Records Proudly Presents: Mah Damba with ‘Taabolo Koura’, a ten-track statement of authority from one of Mali’s defining voices — four decades into a career that has never wavered from its source. This new record deepens the musical partnership with guitarist and arranger Thierry Fournel, who has worked alongside the Damba family for twenty years. The production is a family affair in the deepest sense. Her nephew Badje Tounkara — an icon of the djeli n’goni, sought after by Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, and others — anchors the string arrangements. Her son Guimba Kouyaté, one of the most in-demand guitarists in West Africanmusic, contributes guitar. Her daughters and granddaughters sing the choruses. Antoine Girard’s accordion — an unusual presence in Malian music, but one that echoes Mah Damba’s own grandfather Ousmane Soumano, who played the instrument — adds a rare harmonic colour, while Fournel’s guembri pulls certain tracks toward the hypnotic territory of the Gnawa.

Simón Cifuentes, with only 13 years old, is already emerging as a talented multi-instrumentalist. So much so, that he recently performed with Carlos Vives at the iconic Radio City Music Hall.