asin: B00000061N binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $11.98 USD

Kwassa Kwassa collects the hardest-driving soukous material the Bongo Man performed during the 1980s at the height of the European-African soukous dance craze. While other albums, most notably Amour Fou/Crazy Love and Zing Zong, offer equally strong material, Kwassa Kwassa is unmatched in energetic power.

asin: B00005UKME binding: Audio CD list price: $23.98 USD amazon price: $23.98

After the danceable delights of D, Tarika plunge back into a style that wraps serious ideas in a joyful musical robe while looking at the Indonesian ancestry of Madagascar. Thus tracks like "Sulawesi" shine an important light on the band and the big red island, connecting the dots across the Indian Ocean.

asin: B000000HOB binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $16.98

The late, great Pakistani Qawwali singer's first collaboration with producer/guitarist Michael Brook took the passionate, gymnastic tenor out of tradition and into trip-hop nation.

asin: B000MV8D38 binding: Audio CD list price: $18.97 USD amazon price: $10.97 USD

This 25-song soundtrack to Julian Temple's biopic of the late Joe Strummer is not as much a retrospective of the punk-rock kingpin as an 80-minute radio show with the ex-Clash leader spinning the dials on influential favorites, such as Tim Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy," Eddie Cochran's 1958 rocker "Nervous Breakdown," and Nina Simone's 1967 version of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody." Snippets of int

asin: B00094ARWI binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $16.98

The 8th album for Taha, who routinely toes the line between what is considered "world beat" and the rock/punk/country sound of his music. Produced by STEVE HILLAGE.