Rim Banna
Seasons of Violet
Palestinian vocalist Rim Banna performsa selection of new Palestinian love songs with a fine international ensemble featuring Eivind Aarseth (guitar), Gjermund Silset (bass), Rune Arnesen (drums) and David Wallumrød (keyboards), in addition to her husband Leonid Aleixenco (acoustic guitar). The title refers to the lilac, a violet flower which in Palestine is a symbol of love. All the songs have been composed by Rim Banna together with Leonid Aleixenco, while her mother has written some of the lyrics.

Ragnhild Furholt
Lån meg vengjene
With a single exception, all the tunes on this CD were collected by Ludvig Mathias Lindeman (1812­87). The song Hagbard og Signe was transcribed by O.M. Sandvik (1875­1976) after Svein Tveiten from Hovden, Setesdal, in 1919. 'I'm delving into the past, trying to uncover the myths and mysteries ­ that which lies hidden within the old stories and songs. How did people think in the old days, and how is it that the old legends, myths and songs are still alive and meaningful, even today?'

Dounia
Monkey
Four musicians from various artistic and cultural backgrounds explore Italian and middle eastern roots with a combination of melodies, harmonies and rythmns from all over the world. Their unique sound is unlike much else out there

Antoni Donchev
Dom. No. 13
Composer-pianist Antoni Donchev has received many Bulgarian jazz awards over the last fifteen years and been featured at number of major jazz festivals. In addition to his work with his Acoustic Version, Donchev works in a number of other projects with musicians from all over Europe. Donchev is a model contemporary musician, easily and skilfully handling the broad variety of forms in performing and composing at the turn of the century. He has no difficulty whatever combining the versatility of jazz with folklore and classical music.

Donchev is working with the music space. His compositions are like imaginary landscapes - chamber music atmospheres. He is looking for the space between the spaces - the microcosmos of sounds.

The works heard here are from film and theater works he has composed, performed by a chamber orchestra, with poetry by Edvin Sugarev.

Mamadou Diabate, Ustad Shujaat Husain Khan, Vidwan Lalgudi Gjr Khrishnan
Strings Tradition
Strings Tradition is an original production, different from the countless recordings which try to mix and mingle musical cultures of various origins. It deals with the union of classical traditions (West Africa, North Indian and South India) which have little in common with the vague idea of popular music that we usually associate with the music of the Indian sitar and violin and the Malian kora. These three musicians are all important artists in their own countries and each one offers inspiration and guidance to the others' musical traditions. They are accompanied by Gourishankar on tabla and Muraly Trichy on ghatam.

Ammaraciccappa
Al Qantarah
This Salentine ensemble have a lot of phrases for their music: "electro-world+salento+maghrebi, ecstatic rhythms of south Italy, desert voices and metropolitan sounds." They make thoroughly modern Italian music, completely rooted in the ancient past, and totally beyond classification or pigeon-holes. Highly recommended.

Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis
Taxidoscopio
These Greek artists are producing global pop without peer, mixing local roots with international sounds and modern technology to create, over the course of the last few years, a completely unique aural pallette that relates to almost no one else. fRoots says: '…a completely unique, utterly recognisable and forward-looking style of their own. And in that distillation, it seems to have become more distinctly Greek - a strange, other-worldly Greekness, for sure, but a 21st century Greekness that's modern within its own culture, out there, ahead and rooted rather than just banging off some local language version of what the globised industry dictates. No predictable Greek rock, Europop or hip-hop here then.'

Thanasis Papakonstantinou
Diaphanous
The Greek master of mystery and mood is back with his 2007 release. Once again, echoes of Leonard Cohen, Jim Morrisson and Tom Waits are coupled with radical new ideas for the use of Greek traditional and modern musical forms,and once again, he is astounding. Highly recommended

Enzo Favata Tentetto (featuring Tenores di Bitti)
The New Village
Sardinian musician and composer Favata has been roiling the roots-jazz of Italy for decades now, recording Cds and playing more than 2,000 concertsaround the world. He fuses tradition with a contemporary sense, forging a new music form folk, jazz and avant garde elements that are strictly original. He has studied classical and jazz saxophone, plays the soprano, sopranino and tenor sax, and the bass clarinet, as well as other ethnic wind instruments from Sardinia and elsewhere. Adding Latin, African and middle eastern influences, he has come up with a creative and original new sound that pays homage to the jazz greats while being beholden to no one. This recording features the incredible Tenores di Bitti, who offer not only their voices, but the inspiration of their melodies that are infused into the very core of Favata's new compositions.

La Talvera
Cants e musicas del pais de lodeva
This 2007 release carries on the tradition of Occitan music, but also ventures outside the roots with unique but always sympathetic arrangements. This recording features traditional songs all based on a mid-19th century manuscript by Jules Calvert. fRoots says 'The pride of Occitan delivers the goods gain with another stunning album.'

Zegar Zivi
Žegar Živi (Zegar Lives)
Powerful acapella group vocals, often using the wild beating-against-drone technique of groktenje, diple playing, goat-calling and church-bell ringing from a group of amazingly resilient Serbian singers who've moved back to their village of Žegar in the rocky hill-country of Dalmatia in Croatia – a region war-shattered in the 1990s and still depopulated, but beautiful and now peaceful - to rebuild their homes and pick up the threads of their lives and rich musical traditions. The album's title, and the group's name, means Žegar Lives.Recorded in Žegar in May 2007, produced by Andrew Cronshaw in collaboration with Svetlana Spajić. The digipak contains a 60 page booklet with many photos and extensive notes including the background story to the recordings (in English). Listen

Orchestres Nationaux and Federeaux
Authenticite - The Syliphone Years: 1965-1980
2 CD set, with excellent packaging and notes, of classic, 'golden age' music from Guinea's finest ensembles in recordings from 1965 to 1980

Elena Ledda
Maremannu
Back in stock: One of the prime movers in the reival of Sardinian song, Ledda is above all a passionate and brilliant singer, regardless of the style she chooses. Joined by a superb ensemble of mandola, guitars, percussion and bass, and the appearance of accordionist Riccardo Tesi on many tracks, this recording (her second under her own name) proves that her vision is clear and strong.