To judge from the copyright dates on the tracks included on Arabesque Vol 4, mostly 2005 or earlier, this newly-released compilation from the folks at Momo’s Restaurant in London has been waiting in the wings for some time. But as most of the tracks are new to me and very good, it doesn’t really matter. Revelation of the collection is the starter to this week’s programme by Gaâda Diwane De Béchar. I’ve been meaning to track down the source album by the group from the West Algerian Sahara, whose Myspace site may be the place to start looking: http://www.myspace.com/gaadamusic

As is my bad habit, I played a track from a good new album and then lost it for several months under the pile of subsequent arrivals. The latest to suffer is Festa Farina Forca by the impressively versatile Italian singer, songwriter, musician and bandleader Enzo Avitabile. Never too late to make amends.

Les Espoirs de Corinthe were among the contemporary artists interviewed and photographed in the recent fRoots report from Guinea Conakry by Katerina Lobeck and Judith Burrows. Good to know that distinctive sound is still alive and flourishing.

Nothing else to add to my previous comments about the latest knock-out album by Buika.

As noted by Chris Potts and Con Murphy under ‘Best of Everything’ in this forum, it’s already been a very strong year for albums by female singers, and here comes Tchamantché by Rokia Traore, her fourth and possibly best album so far. Rokia has never sounded much like any other singer from Mali, and this album moves further than ever from any recognisable Malian style. Adventurous and experimental, sparse and intimate, it reaches a peak (or should that be a high plateau) in the sequence from track 3 to 6.

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The programme is available online for seven days after each first broadcast, linked from the World Service link in the menu bar at the top of this page.