‘Three chapters, three geographies,’ Anoushka Shankar scribbled in a diary at a café in Goa on New Year’s Day two years ago, manifesting an ambitious trilogy that she hoped would span multiple geographies with nods to her roots, across continents and collaborators…

Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso[a] (21 October 1925 – 16 July 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century.

Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso[a] (21 October 1925 – 16 July 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music. She had sold over 10 million records, making her one of the best-selling Latin music artists.

One evening in the early 1980s, Isaiah Laing of Supreme Promotions, the promoters of Sting, hosted a dance at the Spanish Town Prison Oval, a stone's throw from the Spanish Town Adult Correctional Centre.

The legendary Malian desert blues artist Samba Touré, has returned with a new album Baarakelaw (The Workers) – the follow up to his highly-acclaimed 2021 album Binga. The album received ecstatic, career defining reviews and led to Samba being named the "Best Artist" of 2022 at Songlines magazine.

From the deep woods now emerges Birna, Wardruna’s sixth studio album. Through his never resting dialogue with nature, main composer Einar Selvik has been searching for the voice of the bear. Birna – the she-bear in Old Norse – is a work of art dedicated to the warden of the forest, nature’s caretaker, and her battles here on earth. Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart – its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.

"La Cosmologie de la Poire" takes us into its fantastic, enchanting and magical universe. In few second you find yourself in the forest of Brocéliande surrounded by fairies and goblins. Their universe is inspired by old, traditional and improvised music. Their sound is simply unique. The debut album of this fantastic quartet is an indefinable masterpiece of fantasy and musical prowess. Starting from ancient and popular music and using techniques of improvisation mixed with traditional composition Nicolas Cambon, Anna Fusek, Karsten Hochapfel and Gabi Levasseur offer to the listener something really unique and unmissable in the musical world.

Mark Kirschenmann’s Tonics is a collection of seven melodies composed and performed on an acoustic trumpet vibrating with a bamboo mouthpipe, which replaces the traditional mouthpiece. The sound is quiet, flute-like, and delicate, opening new identities for the instrument. The curvaceous modal melodies are interwoven with improvisations that emerge from the melodic sources. The tunes unfold freely out of time and are enhanced by various ensembles of strings, percussion, voices, and prepared piano.

On “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which translates to “I should have taken more photos,” Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio pulls from the island’s rich musical history and hybridizes it.

Durban-based gqom futurists Phelimuncasi continue unpicking their musical seams on this latest borderless statement, teaming up with Metal Preyers to venture further into the desolate unknown. The group met up in Nyege Nyege's Kampala studio last year, where they spent three days engineering a sequence of tracks that turned the acts' respective sounds inside out, stretching urgent vocals over mutating backdrops of time-stretched electronic drums, saturated noise and unstable synths.

Michel Charles Sardou (French pronunciation born 26 January 1947) is a French singer and occasional actor.

On their third album, Bokanté have plugged into the blues, tracing the genre's roots in West Africa and the Arab world through the diaspora into the retro-modern present. These nine tracks tell — with lyrics sung mainly in Guadeloupean Creole — of outsiders and seers, memories and joy; of black history, global unity and the futility of war. Of taking time to rest, feel, love. Of the redemptive power of music — as a conduit, a change maker, a muse.

Bachar wanted to record this fifth record, On/Off in his native Lebanon. More precisely in the main room of his family house, a stone house standing alone in the mountains north of Beirut. In the house, electricity goes on & off twice, a day. During the night, hostile and freezing, hyenas are heard; during the day, the birds whistle with serenity, and the light of day shines through the windows, each day slightly differently… This constant duality becomes a source of inspiration for Bachar, obsessed as he is by this rustic environment which exacerbates the senses.

Middle Eastern psych-rock collective Al-Qasar’s debut album is an explosive mix of heavy Arabian grooves, global psychedelia and North African trance music. The band calls it "Arabian fuzz." Brazenly electric and deeply connected. Guests include Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) and Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys).

This new edition of BERCY 95 takes us back to the heart of a live performance where Johnny Hallyday radiates happiness.