| Main centres: | 1-3 business days |
| Regional areas: | 3-4 business days |
| Remote areas: | 3-5 business days |
If Hemisphere's World 2000 was good, Songlines's global pick--in which critic Nigel Williamson attempts exactly the same task--is even better. This selection of the best tracks from the past year is geographically even-handed--it doesn't disdain the interesting things happening in Wales--and it's full of charm and surprise. It's wonderful to hear Miriam Makeba's re-released music with the Manhattan Brothers (Mandela's favourite group), which is as beguiling today as it was 50 years ago. I now want to hear more of the three-hour recording of Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia and his friends--their voices mingle like a flock of birds--and of the sombre-toned Toto Bissainthe, the Haitian diva who died six years ago. Where the choices are predictable, it's simply because they are transcendently good: no one could ignore Cuban keyboard wizard Ruben Gonzalez, the Azerbaijani praise-singer Alim Qasimov, or the new Malian goddess Rokia Traore. But the most heartening thing about this album is the way it celebrates indigenous traditions in their uncontaminated state: with fusion threatening to homogenise all the world's variegated musics, we desperately need magazines like Songlines to man the barricades. CD(2x). English. Manteca. 2000. MANTDCD202. Good Condition.
