Grammy-nominated Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist Fatoumata Diawara returns in 2026 with MASSA, her most personal work to date. Introspective and powerful, the album explores motherhood, faith, memory, and resilience, transforming intimate reflection into universal storytelling. Through these songs, Fatoumata invites listeners, of all backgrounds, to embrace gratitude and accept that destiny is an inevitable part of the human journey. The album also carries a moving tribute to her late father, whose love continues to guide her beyond his passing.

From soulful Sahara blues to mesmerizing mbira melodies from Zimbabwe, African Sojourn offers an expansive yet intimate journey across a continent rich with music and culture. Putumayo's latest African collection brings together singer-songwriters and troubadours from north to south, east to west, who, despite their diversity, share songs united by enchanting melodies, soulful rhythms and rich storytelling. Singing a wide array of languages and performing with local acoustic instruments such as the kora, balafón and mbira, these exceptional artists share stories of love, land, identity, and resilience that are rooted in local traditions yet open to the world.

Amsterdam-based Ghanaian trumpeter, composer and bandleader Berima Amo blends highlife, Afrobeat, traditional West African rhythms, jazz and soul into a rich, contemporary sound. Rhythms of Love is a heartfelt tribute to the music and icons that shaped his journey-exploring love, unity and cultural pride through hypnotic grooves, expressive trumpet lines and soulful melodies. Bridging tradition and innovation, the album celebrates African musical heritage while carrying it boldly into the future.

The iconic Saharan rock band’s sixth album, Assikel, is by turns intimate, raw and deeply atmospheric. Recorded on analogue tape, with the band playing live and direct, the album fully captures their instinctive interplay and hypnotic presence. Songs of resistance, community and longing. Music for this moment. Featuring: Ibrahim Ag Alhabib (Tinariwen)

Ali Farka Touré is well known as one of the most influential and talented guitarists that Africa has ever produced. His legacy and impact are hard to overstate: Ali’s sound merged his much-loved traditional Malian musical styles with distinct elements of the blues, resulting in the creation of a groundbreaking new genre, now well known as the ‘desert blues’, earning him 3 Grammy awards and widespread reverence. 'Voyageur' is the first release of previously unheard music since 2006’s 'Savane', and features a collection of recordings captured at various points in Ali’s illustrious career. The album, which features fellow Malian superstar Oumou Sangaré on 3 tracks, reaffirms Ali’s status as a globally revered legend of African music.

Cesária Évora was a Cape Verdean popular singer. Nicknamed the "Barefoot Diva" for performing without shoes, she was also known as the "Queen of Morna". A native of the island nation of Cape Verde, Cesária Évora was known as the country's foremost practitioner of the morna, which is strongly associated with the islands and combines West African percussion with Portuguese fados, Brazilian modhinas, and British sea shanties. Évora began singing morna at age 16 after meeting an attractive young guitarist. Her talent soon had her performing all over the islands, and in the late '60s two of her radio tapes were released as albums in the Netherlands and Portugal, respectively.

Originally surfacing on Duncan Brooker’s indie Kona label in early 2001, the album single-handedly kick-started the thirst among jazz, funk and soul fans and ‘diggers’ to rediscover lost music from Africa made during the ‘60s and ‘70s from a time when many countries were gaining independence and celebrating a Pan-African identity within their music. This compilation paved the way for Strut's brilliant Nigeria 70 compilation as well as labels like Soundway and Analog Africa! Out of print for over 8 years, the album has been reissued on Strut in its original form with an extra bonus track, a dynamite unreleased psychedelic cut by Kenya’s Ishmael Jingo.

Tinariwen evolve once again on their brand new album, connecting with a younger generation of Tuareg musicians to produce a vibrant album of undulating grooves rooted in their nomadic community. Also featuring guest appearances from José González & Sulafa Elyas. Fierce advocates for their people’s nomadic culture that exists in the desert borderlands between Mali and Algeria, Tinariwen’s bluesy, guitar-driven music has found global acclaim over the past two decades for its lively blend of Tamasheq-language politicism, syncopated rhythms and soaring melody. On Hoggar the band look closer to home, and stake their claim as elders of this Tuareg musical tradition. Going back to their early years of songwriting with acoustic guitars and communal singing around the desert campfire, while also passing the torch onto a younger generation of featured musicians who can continue to keep the flame of rebellion and defiance alive.

Groove Africa is a genre-spanning collection of contemporary African sounds, with a strong emphasis on the vibrant Afrobeats scene of Nigeria and West Africa.

Featuring artists from Morocco to Mauritania and from Tunis to Timbuktu, Desert Blues showcases the soulful and entrancing sounds of North Africa’s Sahara and Sahel regions. Bringing together international icons, rising talents, and exciting new discoveries, the album invites both longtime fans and first-time listeners into a vibrant musical landscape.

Legendary Malian balafon player Neba Solo and donso n’goni player Benego Diakité’s A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking—the first in a series of new releases in collaboration with longtime Nonesuch partner Nick Gold, former head of World Circuit Records—is due February 13 on Etoile Audio / Nonesuch. On the album, co-produced by Gold, Ousmane Haïdara, and Sonny Johns, the acoustic instrumentals are complemented by vocals and percussion as well as touches of mellotron, guitar, and strings. The CD and digital versions their original duo performances, unadorned, recorded in a Bamako garden under a mango tree.

In Traversées, it feels like the kora and the setar have always coexisted. Although the Iranian-Canadian trio Constantinople and Ablaye Cissoko – who engage in the jazz melodies of St-Louis, Senegal – may come from different regions, they are playing on the same strings. Delicate and noble. Beyond a simple exercise of style, the quartet perpetuates the soul and rhythm of nomadic poets, pilgrims, smugglers, the griots of Africa Mandinka and of the medieval Khorasan bakhshish.

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1967-70’ is the first ever collection of Apala music to be released outside of Nigeria. The album focusses on a wide selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960s, a time when Apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is a deeply rhythmical, hypnotic and powerful musical style that combines the striking nasal-style vocals and traditions of Islamic music, the Agidigbo (thumb piano), and the equally powerful drumming and percussion rhythms and techniques of the Yoruba of Nigeria.

ESSAM is the band’s fourth album, recorded with the same core lineup, but marks a significant shift in their sound and approach. Musically, it marks a departure from the rocky, bluesy, psychedelic Tuareg guitar-driven sound influenced by Tinariwen’s heritage — moving toward something more open, modern, and exploratory. For the first time, their long-time sound engineer Maxime Kosinetz stepped in as producer. He travelled to Tamanrasset with Emile Papandreou (of the French duo UTO), a multi-instrumentalist who introduced electronic elements by sampling live instruments and reprocessing them in real time with a modular synthesizer — subtly reshaping the band's sonic identity.

Some people have commented that Tinariwen have always been a country band, albeit a North African take on that most North American of genres. That idea is magnified on new album Amatssou, which finds the Tuareg band’s trademark snaking guitar lines and hypnotic rhythms blending seamlessly with pedal steel, piano and strings from guest musicians including Daniel Lanois, the embellished arrangements lending the songs an epic, universal application.