Columns / Media / Music

‘It's me. I’m alive.’ Yoko Ono, startling and challenging as ever.

An album with a range of references stretching from a lazy Delta blues to the yearnings of Urdu devotionals. By Najma Akhtar and Gary Lucas.

Guitars blast, synthesizers go mad and a group of gospel harmonizers strain for the heavens as sitar strings twang. By Cornershop

CDs that didn't quite make a full review, but are still worthy of a mention.

Starting where founding father of afrobeat Fela Kuti left off, this album features energetic tracks of sweaty inventiveness.

For all its ancient antecedents, Siwan is a very modern album and a joyous meditation for that.

An odd title, given the political geography of Israel/Palestine, this album projects a vision of multicultural music that seems to have little space for Palestinian musicians.

An album that is very much the sound of a modern-day freedom fighter.

Accompanied by a wide range of sound for this latest outing – jazzy horns, strings and the kamele ngoni (harp) played by trusty sidekick Benego Diakite – Seya is an album that simply flows.

Listeners familiar with the harder sounds of Yothu Yindi are in for a surprise. The 12 songs on Gurrumul display an altogether softer side of their author.

Subtitled '18 Songs for Music Lovers', Easy Come, Easy Go is a double album containing a wide choice of songs: from Brian Eno's 'How Many Worlds' to Dolly Parton's 'Down from Dover'

An album loaded with the instrumentation - fiddle, steel guitar, banjo and mandolin - of American roots music.

Congo’s amazing disabled rhythm-maestros Staff Benda Bilili

Sissoko’s warm-toned vocals and fluid kora work, counterpointed by Stone’s banjo-picking make for a wonderfully expansive sound on Africa to Appalachia

Funked-up Hebrew rap, full of asides about booze, girls and – this is one you wouldn’t find with Enimem – gefilter fish.

Pashm’s band – a judicious mixture of Greek, Jewish and Balkan musicians – belt along with brass, baglamas, woodwind and lyres at their disposal.

Waitless by Empty Boat

Mother-Earth! Father-Sky! by Huun-Huur-Tu featuring Sainkho

Made in tandem with the Albanian accordionist / composer Dasho Kurti, the 11 songs on Deserted Villages offer a broad palate, and not all of it mournful.

Certainly some of these songs may have once been heard over fields and cradles rather than concert halls, but their translation from private to public music is a beautiful one.