Fabulous big-band tropical jazz — cumbias, porros — from 1950s and 60s Colombia.

Giddy psych, funk, jazz and electronica freak-outs from Casablanca. A combination of original compositions and folk tunes, crazily blending together Abdou’s wigging organ, rough beat boxes, wayward kit-drumming and crisp north African percussion, a little Hank Marvin and some sporting sing-a-long, and plenty of unfit-to-drive reverb and tape delay. A facsimile reissue of this collectors’ item, first out in 1976. Ace.

The second volume in Abdou’s unmissable Nuits trio of LPs, this time featuring his Casablanca home-girl, sahrawi diva Naima Samih.

Brassy, infectious Afro-Amerindian cumbia, porro, gaita, and mapalé from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, which injected a modern, jazzy, big-band sound into regional Afro-Colombian traditions, and took the country by storm.
The Orquesta Del Caribe, recorded in Medellin, 1946-1961: a legs-eleven blaring trumpets, soaring saxophones, meandering clarinets, rattling and pounding percussion, plus singer Matilde Diaz, led by the maestro Bermudez, widely considered Colombia’s most influential composer of all time.