The inaugural Aga Khan Music Awards, a three-day event held last weekend in Lisbon, celebrated nearly 20 years of wide-ranging work dedicated to the preservation of ancient and threatened cultures, an impressive programme of educational initiatives, and the encouragement of musical exchange and experiment in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Having long been immersed in folk and world music and acoustically-oriented singer-songwriters, it’s a surprise to be given a CD of music by someone who’s never crossed your radar, especially when the artist concerned turns out to have sold some 14 million albums, though mostly in Europe and N

Great music is often born of “what if”s. What if we played Beach Boys-style songs lo-fi, loud, at high velocity? What if we played indie guitar with a hint of Congolese rumba? What if we added a string section to late-Sixties pop-rock? What if we tried to play disco even though we can’t play our instruments at all? That sort of thing.

It’s not often that music of this kind gets a release outside of Morocco, and Arc Music and the producer/musicians must be applauded for curating such an intense, inside view on the ecstatic release of Sufi music across the kingdom, often drawn from a simple street or domestic setting.

The focus of this radio show, one of Peter Culshaw’s occasional updates of global music, is the new sounds coming from Brazil in 2019. The country seems to entering a dark period with new President Bolsanaro having just taken office, but however unsavoury the regime, the beat as always goes on.

Kosua was released only last month, but its journey began two years ago when George Thompson, aka Black Merlin, released Hipnotik Tradisi, a beautiful and captivating document of his travels through Indonesia, seamlessly blending field recordings, found sounds and studio experimentalism.

The penultimate concert in the eclectic and impressive K-Music Festival of contemporary Korean music on Monday at the Purcell Room featured some of the most exquisite and affecting performances of the season, with the traditional Gayageum stringed instrument paired with an effects-laden, ambient-cum-exploratory jazz quartet featuring one of the most distinctive and arresting drummers anywhere, making remarkable music from her kit (shimmering cymbal solos, anyone?).

Enough hyping! This month, without further ado, let’s head straight to the reviews…

VINYL OF THE MONTH

LOR Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (Lo Records)

Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.

Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brilliance

Brahms & Ligeti: Horn Trios André Cazalet (horn), Guy Comentale (violin), Cyril Huvé (piano) (Calliope)