Osibisa made its greatest inroads into British and American popularity in the early '70s. By the time of 1974's Osibirock, the band was in transition, moving from one record label to another (this disc was released in the U.S. on Warner Bros. following a long stint on Decca) as musical tastes changed. At first, Osibisa's rock/highlife hybrid was a welcome change of pace from prevailing trends, and Americans whose ears had been opened to world rhythms by Santana's blend of rock with Afro-Cuban jazz heard a similar exotic, danceable music coming from the Ghanian-by-way-of-London band.

Sing Sing Juniors is composed of the youth of the Faye family who are also known as the Sing Sing Family. Sing Sing Juniors was started in 2004 under the direction of Moustapha Faye, Doudou Faye and Isma Aw as a vehicle for the young generation of the family to present the music and dance traditions of the géwël. Ranging in age from mid-teens to mid-twenties, the full twenty-member ensemble of drummers and dancers skillfully use the sabar rhythms and movements to maintain and build upon the tradition they have inherited.

It says much for Malian music that two of its greatest players, kora masters Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko, are among its most determined innovators. Not content with weighty family legacies (the two are cousins), they have won international recognition for their instrument, the 21-string west African harp, in part through cross-culture collaborations. Diabaté’s latest, with the London Symphony Orchestra, is imminent, while here Sissoko has sought out an assortment of guests. Among them is cellist Vincent Ségal, with whom he has already cut two sublime albums, and who joins clarinet player Patrick Messina for a sprightly take on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

Chris Hinze’s unceasing interest in the integration of ethnic music in western music cultures brought him all over the world and led him to the by now very successful ‘African-Indian and World Music Fusion’.

Rokia Traore has changed direction once again, with dramatic results. In the five years since her last album, Bowmboi, she has toured the US celebrating the life of Billie Holiday, and written a new work - an African response to the life of Mozart - for the maverick director Peter Sellars. Now comes an intriguing, sophisticated and often intimate set that is quite unlike any of the other great music Mali has produced. Many of the songs are built around her subtle and bluesy electric-guitar work, but also make use of the classical western harp and African ngoni, though no longer the balafon. The result is an exquisitely recorded set that manages to sound contemporary but still distinctively African. It's remarkable mostly because of the quality and range of her singing, which can be quietly slinky and personal, rousing, as well as breathy.

Like his legendary father, Ali Farka Touré, Vieux is a guitarist who likes to collaborate. He has worked with the Israeli keyboard player Idan Raichel, and now comes an even more powerful partnership, with American singer Julia Easterlin. The opening Little Things starts with the familiar guitar lines of that Malian favourite Kaira, before Easterlin eases in to nudge the song towards western balladry. Elsewhere, this bravely original fusion switches from an African funk treatment of Fever Ray’s I’m Not Done to slow, thoughtful laments. The traditional In the Pines has been covered by everyone from Lead Belly to Nirvana, but is here reworked with chilling, whispered vocals and desert blues guitar, while the most startling track is a slow, African-edged treatment of Dylan’s Masters of War, which sounds like a pained meditation on the recent chaos in Mali.

Wanita is a mild quantum leap from Traore's debut, Mouneissa. The style she cultivated on her debut – a glorious mix of the singer/songwriter with the rootsy, acoustic instruments of her native Mali – is refined here, and she approaches everything with more confidence. She's very much a rarity in African terms, a female singer/songwriter, and one whose lyrics are very progressive, dealing with the rights of women in a patriarchal society. But she's representative of a new generation that has brought forth a lot of professional women, for whom she's become a figurehead.