As there's something of a forest theme this weekend on theartsdesk, with the Royal Opera House's If-A-Tree festival curated by Joanna McGregor with Scanner, and a report from this year's Borneo Rainforest World Music Festival, and here, a diary of an extraordinary trip I took in 2003 to sample the culture and music of the Pygmies deep in the heart of the Central African Republic.

Television seeks out the stories thrown up by real life. On the one hand there is the obsessive interest in the private lives of the great and good (and not so good) from Margot Fonteyn to Tony Blair. Other dramatists eagerly accept the responsibility to hold a mirror up to society in all its ills from the Ipswich murders to the travails of 19th-century lesbians. But the task that all writers have to face, whoever’s story is being told, is to make the narrative dramatic. A tale of contemporary slavery ought not to struggle there.

“One afternoon back in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I met four scientists in a bar, they were on their way to West Africa to study a parasitic worm that attacks the eyeballs of human beings and turns them into blind men.” And so begin the sleeve notes of C W Stoneking’s second album, Jungle Blues. Last night this teller of tall and fevered tales washed up in deepest Brixton, to perform to a motley crowd in the gloomy but brightly painted Windmill pub. It was an unlikely juxtaposition which nevertheless worked rather well.

Back in June of this year, the international successful Malian blues band gave what felt at the time like a curiously muted performance at the World Cup Kick-off Celebration Concert in Johannesburg. But perhaps it was the effect of having their laidback hypnotic grooves juxtaposed to the in-your-face emoting and hip-gyrating of the likes of Shakira and Alicia Keys that seemed to somewhat mystify the stadium audience.

I must confess that when I first heard about Staff Benda Bilili - a Congolese band partly made up of paraplegics – I felt a little uneasy. The last thing that one wants as a (hopefully) trusted critic is to feel compromised by an obligation to give a positive review, or feel guilty about lessening their chances of bettering their circumstances with a bad review. Yes, the vanity and solipsism of your reviewer has no bounds!

This month's most fascinating or interesting new CDs filtered out by theartsdesk's reviewing team includes the controversial but fun new one from M.I.A., "the first real pop star of the 21st century" Janelle Monae, and the latest from Arcade Fire. We go to Nashville for Caitlin Rose, Dakar for Cheikh Lo, Ghana and Togo for Afro-Beat Airways and everywhere for the sadly missed Charlie Gillett's last compilation. There's some terrific new piano jazz from Vijay Iyer and several groovy videos. CD of the Month is the "re-invention" of Welsh belter Tom Jones. Our reviewers are Howard Male, Graeme Thomson, Adam Sweeting, Joe Muggs, Peter Culshaw, Bruce Dessau, Thomas H Green and Marcus O'Dair.

This month's most fascinating or interesting new CDs filtered out by theartsdesk's reviewing team includes the controversial but fun new one from M.I.A., "the first real pop star of the 21st century" Janelle Monae, and the latest from Arcade Fire. We go to Nashville for Caitlin Rose, Dakar for Cheikh Lo, Ghana and Togo for Afro-Beat Airways and everywhere for the sadly missed Charlie Gillett's last compilation. There's some terrific new piano jazz from Vijay Iyer and several groovy videos. CD of the Month is the "re-invention" of Welsh belter Tom Jones. Our reviewers are Howard Male, Graeme Thomson, Adam Sweeting, Joe Muggs, Peter Culshaw, Bruce Dessau, Thomas H Green and Marcus O'Dair.

Many press releases from now up until Christmas are sure to begin with the words, “Fresh from wowing the crowds at Glastonbury…”, but that’s not going to stop me using them now with reference to this great Malian band. This is because we world music journalists feel a particular swell of pride when one of our beloved acts breaks through the Womad glass ceiling and gets to bring their complex polyrhythms and weird-looking instruments to the mainstream music fan. And what’s more, in the case of Ngoni ba, I’m sure that they genuinely did “wow” that sea of sun-burnt punters, because having seen them at least half a dozen times I’ve yet to witness an audience that hasn’t been pulled into their vortex of duelling ngonis, thumped and slapped calabash, and sweet soaring vocals.