From the first listening to Héritage, the much-awaited fourth album by Songhoy Blues, it's clear that the 4-piece rock band from northern Mali are in a new frame of mind, moving into a more acoustic, creative re-imagining of the "desert blues" style that has brought them to world fame. For over a decade, when not on tour, the four members of Songhoy Blues, three of whom are originally from the north, have been based in Bamako, capital of Mali, unable to return to their homeland, where musicians are in real danger of their lives because of religious fanaticism that sees music as 'haram' (a sin). Charismatic, articulate and creative, the band burst onto the scene in 2013 with a powerful style and stage manner once described as "Timbuktu Punk".

This is the sound, the story, of the M’berra Ensemble, a collective of Malian musicians from the M’berra Refugee Camp in southeast Mauritania, and Italian producer and electro-shaman Khalab. In a sprawling tent city rising out of the desert, out of nothingness, at the border with Mali in West Africa, brought together by spirit and circumstance, the group’s Arab and Tuareg members — some unknown, some who have previously toured Europe — find solace and beauty in music and song.

Ali Farka Touré is well known as one of the most influential and talented guitarists that Africa has ever produced. His legacy and impact are hard to overstate: Ali’s sound merged his much-loved traditional Malian musical styles with distinct elements of the blues, resulting in the creation of a groundbreaking new genre, now well known as the ‘desert blues’, earning him 3 Grammy awards and widespread reverence. 'Voyageur' is the first release of previously unheard music since 2006’s 'Savane', and features a collection of recordings captured at various points in Ali’s illustrious career. The album, which features fellow Malian superstar Oumou Sangaré on 3 tracks, reaffirms Ali’s status as a globally revered legend of African music.

Matador Records presents Afrique Victime, the long-awaited new album by Mdou Moctar. On Afrique Victime the prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter rips a new hole in the sky ­– boldly reforging contemporary Saharan music and “rock music” by melding guitar pyrotechnics, full-blast noise, and field recordings with poetic meditations on love, religion, women's rights inequality, and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers.

Ali Farka Touré trekked the world, bringing his beloved Malian music to the masses. Dubbed “the African John Lee Hooker,” one could hear strong connections between the two; both employed a bluesy style of play with gritty textures that elicit calm and fury in equal measure. While the influence of Black blues music prevailed, Touré created a West African blend of 'desert blues' that garnered Grammy awards and widespread reverence.

Out May 3, ‘Funeral For Justice’ is the new album by Mdou Moctar. Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2021 breakout ‘Afrique Victime,’ it captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down.

By the mid-'90s, Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré was expanding his signature acoustic African blues by changing his instrumental palette and collaborating with Western musicians like Ry Cooder (as on 1994's Talkin' Timbuktu). While Touré gained prominence during this period, many die-hard fans tout the artist's earliest work as his strongest. The double-disc set Red & Green brings together two albums originally released by the French label Sonodisc between the mid- and late '80s. The original vinyl versions were long out of print and difficult to find, until their issue here on World Circuit/Nonesuch. Both albums are entirely acoustic (Touré didn't introduce an electric guitar until 1991's The Source), with minimal accompaniment on calabash and ngoni (a traditional four-string guitar), which perfectly complements Touré's percussive guitar style and plaintive, keening vocals.

Amghar: The Godfatdher of Touareg Music - VOL. 1 is the first career retrospective of the legendary, late Tuareg innovator Abdallah Oumbadougou, who is considered the Godfather of the Tuareg / Desert Blues genre and was a primary influence of current artists Bombino and Mdou Mocktar. It features 14 tracks, newly remastered by 5 time GRAMMY winning engineer Michael Graves, and includes 6 unreleased, never before heard tracks. The gorgeous Double Vinyl package also includes extensive historical liner notes from Tuareg expert and historian Andy Morgan and lyric translations in Tamashek, French and English. The cover portrait of the artist was created by Nigerian born illustrator Diana Ejaita who is notable for her extensive cover work with the New Yorker magazine. 'He was like a father to us. Like our first inspiration' - BOMBINO

Sahrawi singer-songwriter activist Aziza Brahim’s fifth album Mawja (Wave in Hassaniya Arabic) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundational palette: Saharan and Iberian percussion entwining with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass.

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.

Recorded live at Melkweg in Amsterdam, Netherlands in late 2019, Bombino’s Live In Amsterdam marks the long-awaited first live album from the “world’s best guitarist” - Noisey

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.

A Guide to the Birdsong of Western Africa is an album of music inspired by endangered birdsong. Each featured artist was challenged to make an original track using and inspired by the song of an endangered bird from their country. The album aims to raise awareness about the plight of these birds while raising funds for organisations that are working to protect them.

On the front cover of Aziza Brahim’s new album, Sahari, a young girl poses in ballet shoes and a glistening white tutu. It’s a common childhood scene, but it’s tipped upside down. She’s not privileged and the backdrop isn’t a comfortable suburban home. She’s an exile, living nowhere near her homeland, and behind her stand the tents and buildings of a refugee camp. There’s a desert on the ground and a burning sky above. Yet even in this bleakness, she has optimism. She believes in a better future.