Sometimes, a creation from the contemporary world conceals some of the greatest treasures of the human soul. Between millenary tradition anchored in a territory and globalised modernity, Burkina Hakili is a melting pot of humanity. Few albums contain so much cross-energy: the fibres of the same fabric from which the great Kady Diarra is made!

Sequana is the tenth album by Franco-Algerian singer-songwriter Souad Massi. If her music was previously coloured with folk and chaabi, the sound palette broadens here as far as the Sahel, the Caribbean and Brazil, with Justin Adams (Rachid Taha, Tinariwen, Robert Plant) on production. Souad Massi continues on her path as a committed, liberated woman singing about the causes close to her heart. Sequana is a collection of ten songs, nine of which were written by her, with the intention of capturing the passage of time and that which we must strive to preserve and pass on. The album draws on a diversity of musical styles – folk, country, rock, calypso, bossa, along with sounds of the Middle East and the Algerian desert.

‘Duniama’ is a word in the Susu language meaning ‘in this world’, and it seeks to encompass everything that Jarabi Band stand for. Lead vocalist, djembe, and kora player Mohamed Camara describes the album as “my personal journey of life, loss, and love. Each song tells a story.”

'Diré’, Idrissa Soumaoro new album, comes as a surprise to Malian and international audiences. Composer, singer, guitarist and master of the kamalen n’goni Idrissa Soumaoro presents here a beautiful collection of songs on his third album, Diré, named in honor of the town where he met his wife and where his first daughter, who is no longer with us, was born.

Over the last 15 years, Jordi Savall has been exploring the links between Western and Eastern repertoires because he regards this work as a way to develop a better mutual understanding. On Oriente Lux, Hespèrion XXI plays alongside the ensemble Orpheus 21, created by him in the wake of the recent migrant crisis to welcome musicians from countries stricken by war, hunger or disasters to draw attention to the dignity shared of all humankind. The idea - prevailing during the Middle Ages - of a light coming from the East, Oriente Lux, is actualized on this recording with the fruitful encounter of repertoires from Syria, Bangladesh, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Greece, Lebanon, Irak, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.

Fusing the rhythms and invocations of the ancient Saharan Banga ritual with an electrical storm of contemporary sonics, Ifriqiyya Electrique’s second album both grips and awakens.

Bombino is back with a brand new studio album - 'Sahel'. The new record is Bombino’s first full album in over five years, and follows 2018’s ‘Deran’, which garnered praise like "the Sultan of Shred" from The New York Times, and "the World's Best Guitarist" from Vice. This praise also turned the guitar luminary + Tuareg folk hero into the first-ever GRAMMY®-nominated artist from Niger. ‘Sahel’ was produced by produced by David Wrench (David Byrne, Frank Ocean, Caribou, The xx) and was recorded at Studio HIBA in Casablanca, Morocco.

The material of the Epic of Gilgamesh is ancient. The first texts in Sumerian date from the early 2nd millennium BC. The text handed down in cuneiform on clay tablets was reconstructed from many tablet fragments and is still not completely known. At the center of the epic's plot is Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, who roams the world in search of eternal life. He meets Uta-napischti, who tells him the story of the deluge. Uta-napishti is the Babylonian equivalent of the biblical Noah. The Heidelberg Assyriologist Prof. Dr. Stefan M. Maul translated the mighty epic into German. The phonetically originally sung text and this translation form the basis of Enjott Schneider's 15-movement oratorio ABUBU.

Imagine a life based on unconditional love. A life filled with compassion, lived in service of others. A life of prayers and offerings and song.

(Los Angeles, August 1, 2023) – On September 8th , the acclaimed Hawai’i-born ‘ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro will release Grateful, his most personal project to-date, featuring twenty-two collaborations with a who’s who of Hawai`i-based artists, from Henry Kapono to Kawika Kahiapo, Brother Noland to Raiatea Helm, Justin Kawika Young to Del Beazley and John Cruz to Kimié Miner.

Frankosun and the Family is a fresh and fine-tuned afrobeat orchestra based in Helsinki, Finland. The band was founded by Oladele Franck Koumolou, who was born in the voodoo heartland - the Republic of Benin.

Keleketla! is an expansive collaborative project, reaching outward from Johannesburg to London, Lagos, L.A. and West Papua, “Keleketla!” started as a musical meeting ground between Ninja Tune cofounders Coldcut and a cadre of South African musicians (introduced by the charity In Place Of War), including the raw, South African-accented jazz styles of Sibusile Xaba, and rapper Yugen Blakrok (Black Panther OST). From those initial sessions, the record grew to encompass a wider web of musical luminaries, including Afrobeat architects, the late pioneer Tony Allen and Dele Sosimi, legendary L.A. spoken word pioneers The Watts Prophets, and West Papuan activist Benny Wenda.

Prepare to be blown away by the intesity of Al Bilali Soudan. This music has been performed from at least the 16th century by Touareg griots to celebrate the end of harvest and the changing of the seasons, to encourage warriors and to welcome them back from battles, to praise noble families and to heal the sick. Over centuries this music has evolved through fusion with other ethnic groups.

From Timbuktu Mali AL BILALI SOUDAN are members of an extended family of craftsmen who for generations have been sought after musicians and griots. The band is a torch-bearer of a quintessentially Tamasheq music shaped by continuous interplay between tehardent and hand percussion. Abellou and his uncle Abou are masters of the genre. Accompanied by their sons and cousins they bring youth and energy to the music. Lightning fast, sometimes looping, this is intense mastery of a traditional repertoire is improvised and adapted into the 21st century. Their work represents cultural preservation renewed. The music retains a similar intensity and urgency while remaining loose and dreamlike. Melodic phrases spiral around and on top of each other while shouts of ecstatic joy and proddings are peppered amid the more traditional praises.

For The Good Ones’ new album, RWANDA, you should be loved, bandleader Adrien Kazigira composed over forty songs. Most were meditations on his now thirteen-year-old daughter, Marie-Claire, and the life-threatening tumor that has afflicted her left-eye. The recording was done live without overdubs on Adrien’s farm and was imbued with the passing of producer Ian Brennan’s mother during the days that they were there together as well as a former founding band member recently having succumbed to his own demons.