Sometimes it’s worth remembering that what is world music to one music lover is pop music to another. Portuguese four-piece Deolinda’s first album, Canção ao lado, spent nearly two years at the top of the charts at home, so there are an awful lot of people who see this band as pop music. This must also make it strange for the band themselves who, presumably, play sizeable venues in Portugal, only to find themselves in front of a London crowd of less than 300 at the Jazz Café last night. And to add one final twist, this London crowd seemed to be largely made up of Portuguese fans.

No, not “trance” in the sense of galloping four-to-the-floor electronic music made by people on Ecstasy for people on Ecstasy. This trance is the original ritualised half-conscious state produced by fast, intensely repetitive, rhythmic tribal music… OK, now I’m thinking about it, we are kind of on the same page here, you just have to appreciate that what this French/Italian/Algerian/Kabyle singer-songwriter is interested in is the spiritual origins of the braindead quantised noise favoured today by the average clubber.

As a world music critic one gets used to the stream of superlatives that generally arrive in the wake of whatever big new act is being plugged. World music promoters have a particularly hard job because they don’t just want to preach to the converted; they also want to try to get some new listeners to widen their musical horizons a little. So even before I’d heard a note of the Creole Choir of Cuba I knew that they’d gone down a storm at the Edinburgh Festival, that Jools Holland’s producer wanted them for Later..., and that they were booked to do various BBC radio sessions.

This is one of the most eagerly awaited albums of the year, at least in world music circles. And for impeccable reasons. It is brilliantly produced and joyously sung; it swings with a rare soulfulness and conveys a sense of the Garifuna community. When Andy Palacio died tragically young at the age of 48 in 2008, he’d managed to put the Garifuna on the cultural map with one of the great albums of the last decade, Watina, and seemed destined for great things – when he was called “the new Bob Marley”, it didn’t sound completely ridiculous.

What’s not to like about this Swiss trio with an unquenchable love of the most obscure American roots music? As well as having the ability to evoke the spirit of early Cajun and rock’n’roll recordings without resorting to staid academic imitation, they are also clearly influenced by the likes of The Clash and the Velvet Underground. This means they’re as focused on producing a satisfyingly physically-present contemporary noise as they are in stimulating a revival of the French migrant/African-American music of deepest Louisiana.

As part of my homework before last night’s gig at the Scala I played Senegalese singer Cheikh Lo’s latest album Jamm over and over again, waiting for some of its tunes to lodge in my mind - waiting to be compelled rather than feel duty bound to play it again. But no, I just couldn't connect with it. There’s nothing ostensibly wrong with the thing: it’s brimming over with easy-going cheer and passion, it's beautifully played and sung, and it’s all wrapped up in that familiar crystal-clear production that producer Nick Gold is so adept at delivering (his recent work with AfroCubism being another perfect example). But something was missing.

In the next instalment of our Year Out/Year In series, theartsdesk's New Music writers cast a critical eye over 2010, and offer some recommendations for 2011, incorporating some very funky videos. Our selection of recommended albums from the past year ranges wildly over electronica, world, jazz, indie, rock and folk. We also note some disasters and sad losses. Written by Howard Male, Peter Culshaw, Russ Coffey, Peter Quinn, Bruce Dessau, Kieron Tyler and Thomas H Green.

When the hit Broadway musical Fela! reached London last week, Femi Kuti joined the ovations on opening night with more feeling than most. The musical’s subject, his father Fela Kuti, was a government-taunting mix of James Brown and Che Guevara, a musical revolutionary who, with drummer Tony Allen, forged Afrobeat, and a polygamous, dope-smoking thorn in the side of successive corrupt Nigerian governments.

With his sublime renditions of Azerbaijan's classical music, Alim Qasimov is one of the world's great performers. On the eve of the singer's appearance at the Barbican’s Transcender Weekend of spiritual trance music, where he is performing this Sunday, theartsdesk recalls a trip to the old Soviet state to drink vodka, play chess and find out about this extraordinary singer.

The group Pingasan’k “calls for good spirits”. The name refers to “a bucket to put rice in, tied with the bark of a tree”. Regardless of rice or spirits, this band touched my heart. The gentle, haunting sounds come from the bamboo tube zithers (pratuon’k) made from giant mountain bamboo, which is only cut down when they see the moon. “We do not want our instrument to smell sweet or our insects will bite it,” explains leader Arthur Kanying.