We need an alternative word to describe female singers who dominate the musical landscape of their countries. The commonly-used term Diva can imply an arrogant, disdainful and demanding person, which is not necessarily the case with the six women featured in this programme. It certainly didn’t seem to be applicable to the three I’ve met, namely Mari Boine, Miriam Makeba or Asha Bhosle, all of whom were humble, appreciative and ready to laugh.

Whenever I turned on daytime TV during a visit to Turkey in 1994, the screen invariably presented a remarkably good female singer in front of a big orchestra. Sezen Aksu is the most famous of all of them, not only an exceptional singer but a very good and successful song-writer too. ‘O Sensin’ is from her album with Goran Bregovic, in which they revisited the repertoire of Balkan songs that Goran had previously recorded with other singers – this was first recorded for a film soundtrack by Cesaria Evora.

Born in Argentina but revered throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America, Mercedes Sosa is one of those singers whose huge voice is better heard live than on record, but she holds it back very effectively on ‘Milonga por el’, from her album Escondido en mi pais (Hidden in my country).

Marie Boine, the Sami singer from the north of Norway, was reportedly one of the hits of this year’s WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park. Stuck in the mud, I didn’t manage to find her.

Directed by Andy Jones, the film As Old as My Tongue is a funny, touching and revealing documentary about Bi Kidude, the Taraab singer from Zanzibar who is still performing and recording at the age of  90-something years old. She doesn’t always sing in tune, but gets by through a combination of determination and inspiration. The fourth volume in the Zanzibari series brings together her recordings form the past fifteen years or so, including Globestyle’s recording of ‘Ya Laiti’ which works really well.

Miriam Makeba’s extraordinary recording career stretches across more than fifty years, and most of her best records were made in South Africa during the 1950s with the Skylarks vocal group. The Best of the Early Years collects many of them together, but although the sleeve note suggests that ‘Pata Pata’ is the original recording from that period, the album actually uses the 1967 version made in New York with producer Jerry Ragovoy. A top ten hit in America, it’s a rare case of a re-recording improving on the original. Incidentally, a new various artist compilation from Putumayo, World Hits, reverses the error, referring to her 1967 recording in the sleeve note but actually presenting the earlier version. Very confusing!

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