Baloji: Kinshasa Succursale

Baloji is a rapper and singer who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but has spent most of his life in Belgium. Now he has decided to return to the country of his birth to record with local musicians, and persuaded some of Kinshasa's finest players to work with him. The result is not so much a showcase for Baloji as a reminder of Congo's magnificent and varied musical history, which Baloji is happy to make use of.

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Fatoumata Diawara: Kanou

The Original Sound of Cumbia 1948-79

Infected by cumbia fever, Britain's Will "Quantic" Holland decamped to Colombia, learned the accordion, the music's defining instrument, and formed his own band. This two-CD compilation is a further result of his grand obsession.

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Frontera Bugalú

Frontera Bugalú's Latin rhythms are here to shake hips and tap toes, regardless of age. They will cement their spot in the cumbia spotlight with their upcoming album release Friday, Nov. 25, at Tricky Falls. The self-titled album includes all original music in Frontera Bugalú's modernized cumbia style seasoned with the classical feel of Mexican border and tropical dance music. "We are definitely influenced by the works of musicians from the '70s," said Kiko Rodriguez, vocalist, accordion player and musical coordinator for the band. He grew up listening to Juan Gabriel and Los Tigres Del Norte. In his music, he draws from the desert yearning of such influential names of border music and adds the playful liveliness of their tropic counterparts like Rigo Tovar and Fito Olivares.

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Various Artists: The Original Sound of Cumbia

Much of the best music of 2011 has in fact been the music of 1958, or 1967, or 1974. Week by week, compilations of the world’s lost and forgotten songs – excavated in obscure locales from Angola to Cambodia, dusted down and re-released – have sounded fresher and more exciting than a great deal of contemporary output. To the list we must now add this hypnotic and evocative double CD of Colombia’s native dance music, cumbia. And once more the project’s musical archaeologist – pith helmet on head and record bag at the ready – is a British obsessive. It’s a long way from Bewdley in Worcestershire to the mouth of the Magdalena river on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. But the insidious, chugging rhythm of cumbia was enough to lure musician and producer William Holland from his home town not just to visit, but to set up a recording studio and move out there. For the past five years he has searched the country’s record shops and markets to piece together the history of this influential musical form. The 55 tracks here, many originally shellac 78s, are the pick of what he discovered. In the elegant and scholarly liner notes, Holland compares the 950-mile river Magdalena, birthplace of cumbia, with the Mississippi, cradle of the blues. There are many similarities between the two musical forms too: cumbia, like its US counterpart, is a simple template that invites endless reinterpretation. As the two discs here roll by, its striking that what you hear is always the same but always different.

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