Watching the audience’s reaction to LaXula on the free stage at the Barbican in May, ahead of the evening’s concert by winners at this year’s Awards for World Music, brought home what an arresting performer their leader is. Dressed like some kind of world music Goth, Monte whirled around the stage and had people asking, why wasn’t LaXula the European winner? A winner? She wasn’t even a contender, still being without a record label to put her album out. From a sales point of view, a record label isn’t so necessary in this modern era of MySpace and downloads, when an artist can release her own album and do quite well. But the delegates at last year’s WOMEX trade fair, who make the nominations for the Awards, had never heard of LaXula, a group put together in London by the Spanish singer and songwriter Monte PalafoX.. In-Xile is included in this month’s package sent out by the compilers of the monthly world music charts to 52 radio DJ’s around Europe, so it will be interesting to see if they bite on this delicious apple of an album. Ojos de Brujo, look behind you – here’s an artist who is hot on your tail.

Many of the artists featured in these shows are not widely known in their own countries, but two of this week’s singers are famous pop singers widely played on their region’s radio stations. Very popular in Bulgaria, Konstantin won the nation’s annual contest for Best Folk Song in 2003 with ‘Aide, Zemi Tamburate’ in which he exhorts his percussionist to play that tambourine and celebrate our heroes and our beautiful women.

The Lebanese singer Nancy Aram is recommended by Nasim Masoud at Songlines Magazine as one of the Middle East’s most ubiquitous voices.

Suspects is a South African hip hop group, included in one of two albums called Mood Africa, drawn from the many releases on the Melt label over the past ten years or so.

I’m not sure if the fifth volume in the series Oriental Garden is better than its predecessors, or if it’s just luck that I gave it more attention. In any case, I like several things on it, including ‘La Vie Populaire’ by Enrico Macias. I’d never heard of him before, but the sleeve note informs us that he’s a famous singer songwriter in Turkey and Egypt who has been commissioned to write songs for the United Nations.

The album Anahita by Shweta Jhaveri has been sitting on my shelf since it was sent in 1998. I ran across it while looking for something else in the India section of my CD library, took it down to wonder why I have kept it, and noticed that among the musicians is the violinists Jenny Scheinman, who more recently played so beautifully on the albums of Marta Topferova. Equally intriguing, production is by Lee Townsend, responsible for supervising the impeccable sound on many Bill Frisell albums. Following the principle, better to listen late than never, the reward is to discover the spellbinding ‘To a Beloved’.

If you have any comments, queries and corrections, please post them in the Forum (choose the 'Forum & Playlists' link on menu bar at the top) where they can spark off further reactions from other listener/readers.

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.