New global sounds this month include tracks from the scintillating new album from Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, electro-Sufi grooves, Afro-folk from Koral Society, the soundtrack from They Will Have to Kill Us First (about the struggle of Malian musicians against extreme Islamicists) and classic Cuban nostalgia from Celina González and Estrellas de Arieto. Not to mention some contemporary Japanese composition and São Paulo Frippertronics.

This is a bit of a curiosity. Kasai Allstars were bought to our attention by producer Vincent Kenis almost a decade ago, after he’d had great success with those masters of the amplified thumb piano cacophony, Konono 1.

Mulatu Astatke has carved out a particular niche within music. He is a one-off purveyor of what Brian Eno called “jazz from another planet”, smoky, mysterious and playful. He’s about the only artist you could describe as both transcendent and sleazy. The sleazy bit is mainly due to the colours of the horns and vibraphone, suggesting a less than salubrious nightclub, and he himself has something of the demeanour of a lounge lizard.

Because so many African albums that get an international release feature tastefully neutered acoustic guitar, pretty scatterings of kora notes, and lyrics centred on some imagined ideal Africa, it is a blessed relief to hear something as punchy, confrontational and insistent as this explosion of beats and hollering from Ghana’s King Ayisoba.

Tamikrest’s fourth album is well-presented, good enough, but a little hamstrung by what have become the clichés of the modern Touareg genre: the lilting rhythms of a camel cruising slowly across the dunes, intertwined guitars that smoothly swirl bewteen old Tamashek melodies and gentle riffs that might have come from the Deep South.

Those of us who saw the first, 1977 TV adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots in our teens still remember the shock and horror at its handling of a subject about which we knew little, American slavery. We know a lot more now, but the visceral reaction to inhumanity and injustice is no less strong. That's thanks to the high production values of the latest version, its gift for finding the right actors, and the often giddying cinematography of an honourable mainstream parallel to a towering masterpiece among movies, 12 Years a Slave.

For a young singer like Joel Culpepper, blessed with a fine set of vocal chords and remarkable skill in using them, there is a wellspring of black singing tradition to draw from – from gospel and blues through to soul and contemporary R&B.

Another peripatetic global music update from theartsdesk's Peter Culshaw, hosted by Music Box Radio. This edition features forthcoming album releases from hard salsa revivalists La Mambanegra, a remix from heroic desert rockers Tinariwen and electro Tunisian stars Bargou 08.

The arrival of this oppressively atmospheric 19th-century historical drama is being trailed as the BBC's bold attempt to break the Saturday night stranglehold of soaps and talent shows. No doubt they were encouraged by the success of all those Saturday night Scandi dramas on BBC Four, and if Taboo falls short it won't be because of a lack of stellar names.

Cities, the fastest growing habitats in the history of the world, provided the subject for the sixth and final programme in Planet Earth II, the series that came a decade after the original Planet Earth programmes set new standards for television coverage of wildlife and nature.