In February of 2015, Grammy Award-winning band Snarky Puppy recorded Family Dinner Volume Two in front of a live studio audience with guest instrumentalists and vocalists from all over the world. A companion piece to the monumental album, this documentary/concert-film features exclusive candid interviews and acoustic performances from the guest artists. The project is a true testament for showing first-hand how music can be a bridge between diverse cultures from countries from all over the world to create a unifying musical statement for the average listener or the devout music-connoisseur.

Willie Bobo's 1965 LP, Spanish Grease, has been combined with his Uno Dos Tres 1-2-3 LP from 1966 on one CD reissue. One pass through the title cut of Spanish Grease and you know that Carlos Santana was listening. The easy R&B/Latin jazz shuffle on this Bobo original, with its mix of Spanish and English vocals, is an obvious touchstone to cuts like "Evil Ways" on Santana's first two albums. What a shame, then, that the rest of the record is primarily comprised of covers of pop hits of the day like "It's Not Unusual" (a vocal and an instrumental version!) and "Our Day Will Come." The timbales player and his band lay down respectable grooves, but "Spanish Grease" is the only original on the album, and by far the most rewarding number. Similarly, the toughest and most memorable track on Uno Dos Tres 1-2-3 is the one Bobo original, "Fried Neck Bones and Some Home Fries." Its creeping Latin soul groove was, like "Spanish Grease," an obvious inspiration for Carlos Santana. But on most of the rest of the recording, Bobo coasts through interpretations of period hits like "Michelle," "Goin' Out of My Head," and Jay & the Americans' (!) "Come a Little Bit Closer," with some jazz and pop standards as well.

The latest Album by OKAN. Fuses Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, electronica and pop, with contributions from stellar artists from the Cuban diaspora and other musical cultures.

In November 2022 world-renowned kora player Ballaké Sissoko and acclaimed guitarist Derek Gripper spend just three hours recording a wordless album together. The kora and guitar in the hands of masters - a session where New Ancient Strings meets One Night On Earth.

Sweet Revenge is an amazingly sophisticated album in which Sakamoto sets the distinctive and heart-rending chordal and harmonic ideas of his soundtrack work to trip-hop and neo-bossa-nova beats. The songs are fronted by a succession of guest vocalists who each contribute lyrics which add up to an amazingly coherent whole–a mature meditation on love, longing, conflict, revenge and regret. As usual, Sakamoto was ahead of his time. By spotlighting the deep poetry of J-ME and Latasha Natasha Diggs, this 1994 album anticipated by years the introspective hip-hop diva trend popularized by Lauryn Hill.

The work of an artist often suggests that of an alchemist. In her new album, Aire, Mexican singer and composer Magos Herrera transformed the grief, fears, and loneliness of a deadly plague into a luminous collection of songs representing "a celebration of our humanity and the healing power of music."

This is as close to Latin purist Mongo as we have heard in recent years, an eight-piece salsa band – including several members of the 1997 Tito Puente ensemble, like trumpeter Ray Vega, altoist Bobby Porcelli and tenorman Mitch Frohman – playing a brace of Mongo classics and Latin jazz pieces live before a hushed crowd in Seattle's Jazz Alley. There are no pop covers, one electric instrument (a bass), lots of extended jazz solos (Porcelli and Frohman really burn on the pioneering Afro-Cuban classic "Manteca"), and an unusual (for Mongo) emphasis on the timbales on many tracks, which shoves the rhythms closer to the salsified Puente manner.

Using voice, drum, whistle, chimes, shakers, rattle, tambourine, and didgeridoo, Airto and company make music that comes from all regions and belongs to none. These are songs for ritual and healing, based on many cultures. The mood is ethereal, yet because of the predominance of percussion, also powerful. New age music with punch.

If one were to compile a list of iconoclastic and innovative guitarists who came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, the list would have to include such names as Michael Hedges, Adrian Belew, David Torn and Steve Tibbetts. While Tibbetts is probably the least known of the four, his work is easily on par with that of the others. What makes Tibbetts unique among these is that he is equally prone to playing acoustic and electric guitars. He has released several all-acoustic albums, but most of his albums feature a good mixture of both, as well as judicious use of electronic effects and a heavy reliance on a variety of exotic and familiar percussive instruments. Safe Journey is all of the above in a nutshell.

By the time he was twenty, Joseph Tawadros had already received a significant music fellowship and an ARIA nomination for his first album. He's gone on to become one of the most respected Oud players in the world, performing a concert of his original music at the BBC Proms and being awarded the Order of Australia medal along the way. For the last few two years he's been stuck in London during the pandemic, finishing off an album that he began in New York, but in the Drawing Room he's looking forward with a tour and mystery new project on the way.

The follow-up to the pioneering Australian art pop duo's 2012 comeback LP Anastasis, Dionysus dispenses with the more song-oriented approach of its predecessor in favor of an atmosphere-driven bacchanalian oratorio inspired by the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. Split into two tracks with a sum of seven movements, Dionysus unfurls like a guided ayahuasca trip; a curl of aromatic smoke that develops into a roaring, pre-Byzantine bonfire replete with primeval chants and ancient rites. Opener "Sea Borne" tracks the outsider God's arrival via a slow build of tribal beats and a sinewy, unfolding melody that suggests "Misirlou" by way of "Kashmir" – the album continues to eschew the European folk proclivities of the duo's early work in favor a more Mediterranean and North African aesthetic.