Digitally remastered and with extensive liner notes, this CD offers a rare link to a virtually unknown time, before the Soviet era changed the lives and music practices of the region for ever.

Remastered from rare 78 rpm discs to give outstanding sound - from nearly a century ago.

The Ewe people of Ghana and Togoare reknowned for their polyrhythmic drumming and beautiful call and response singing. Travelling through this region, one is struck by the way in which they have preserved their traditional music alongside the new cultural ideas brought by globalisation.

The Dzigbordi group is a community dance drumming group that people from all age groups can join. On this CD they perform several classic dances from the Ewe repertoire before moving on to their own 'proprietary' dance - The Dzigbordi (Patience) Dance.

This recording from Peru, produced in 1958 by the late Latin American literary historian, Professor José Durand Flórez (Peru, 1925-1990) is unique in that it features Manuael Quintana Olivares and Augusto Ascuez Villanueva, two of the most important practitioners of jarana who have ever lived, singing canto de jarana with Elías Ascuez Villanueva and Luciano Huambachano Temoche (both also playing guitars), known locally as the "four aces".

This CD tells a fascinating story of the emergence of the genre jarana, with the development of perhaps Latin America's most intriguing capital city and the people who lived there and created this exceptional music.

This HMV GV series is a catalogue of roughly 250 double sided 78rpm discs issued between 1933 and about 1958, comprising almost entirely Latin music, mainly from Cuba but also from Puerto Rico and Brazil. It drew on recordings originated by Gramaphone and Victor (hence the GV prefix). The series was aimed initially at the West African market, but subsequently reached and became very popular across the entire African continent, particularly in the Congos.

This CD provides a snapshot of what African musicians heard as they listened to the GV recordings on record, on the radio and live in local bars.

Blowers from the Balkans presents a remarkable collection of historic recordings from virtuoso players of wind instruments from the countries that make up the Balkans – Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and the newly independent parts of the former Yugoslavia. The recordings were made over a period spanning from the 1906 through to the mid 1940s. All have been re-mastered to the highest standards to produce outstanding sound quality.

The featured instruments include clarinets (and related reed instruments), panpipes, bagpipe and flutes with a variety of backings and the package is completed with detailed notes from the compiler Risto Pekka Pennanen as well as historic photographs.

These recordings reflect the vigour of Kazakhstan’s present-day bardic tradition, and the virtuosity of the horse-hair fiddlers. It also reveals a new magic which young musicians are creating with ancient instruments; like the jew’s harp and zither which combine with the richness of Kazakhstan’s vocal music.