Achachay is what highland Ecuadorians say when the cold catches them, arraray when the heat does. Both words came into...
Psalm 68 says Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to Elohim, one of the Hebrew Bible’s names for God, and...
Cuatro Piraguas started “La Cumbia del Jardinero” after a sleepless night and a small gardening episode at Villa Plagwitz in...
The funk Isaac Hayes and Willie Hutch wrote for American crime films in the early 1970s has a second home...
“The devil is busy” is what churchgoers say when trouble arrives, and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 take the phrase,...
Columbus’s Pinta, Niña and Santa María sail through “Delfín del Mundo” alongside pineapples, cockerels, chocolate, tobacco and caipirinhas, a roll...
A centuries-old devotional song from Morocco’s Gnawa repertoire, “M’Bara Meskin” tells of poor M’Bara, left outside the shrine in torn...
Black Sherif takes his own sound apart on SUN SHERIF, the six-track EP he released through Blacko Management and EMPIRE...
The chorus of “Don’t Try” turns an old piece of street wisdom into a hook: “Don’t try piss on me...
Amamere come from Cape Coast, the Fante fishing port where Ebo Taylor and C.K. Mann were born, and they play...
Ska and rocksteady set the tempo on “Be Who You Are”, a faster footing than the roots rhythms Macka B...
“Yira Ye” takes its title from a Bambara phrase that means roughly “that’s how it is”, and it is the...