When the Revolution Comes

Arkansas-bred troubadour with a worn, plainspoken voice. Who Will Be Next? on Mudtown Crier Records. Songs for the long road out of the valley.

Louisville barroom poetry. Dancing on the Edge. Country music for people who never quite left.

David Berman's final project on Drag City. Songs written by a man who knew exactly what he was leaving.

Brighton acid-folk dreamers. Hermit's Grove on Batov Records. Cosmic rock with its feet in the garden soil.

Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada with Chicago soul man Neal Francis. Jaguar Sound on ATO Records. Instrumental soul under a wide Texas sky.

Christophe Chassol's Big Sun, a record mapped from Martinique. Tricatel. Piano that charts a place the way a cartographer charts a coast.

Thomas Mapfumo's first band, years before chimurenga had a name. Analog Africa's 4-Track Recording Session. The seed of Zimbabwe's protest music.

A Wassoulou voice from Mali's south. Les voix d'or du Mandingue on King Music Abidjan. Songs in Bambara that carry the field and the market.

The ArchAndroid, an Afrofuturist concept album on Bad Boy/Wondaland. Saul Williams spits over the uprising. Dance or die.

Del, Dan The Automator, and Kid Koala rapping from the year 3030. Deltron 3030. A dystopian concept record that still hasn't aged.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli on Rawkus. Black Star. The song that borrowed its title from a Toni Morrison line about eyes and thieves.

Chicago's poet-rapper, self-released. Room 25. A quiet, precise voice that refuses the machine on her own terms.

Lo-fi beatmaker working from a self-released discography. Bedroom instrumentals that drift like weather over the creek.

Little Simz's Sometimes I Might Be Introvert on AGE 101. Nigerian-born Obongjayar rides shotgun. Bars with a rifle's patience.

Malian star Fatoumata Diawara meets Nigeria's Yemi Alade. London Ko on Wagram/3ème Bureau. Two continents, one groove.

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Gilles Peterson's Brasil Bam Bam Bam project on EMI. Gabriel Moura's voice carries the samba. A love letter to Brazilian song.

The golden years of Addis Ababa, from Éthiopiques Vol. 3 on Buda musique. A horn section that sways like a mirage.

Nigerian twin sisters Kehinde and Taiwo. Danger. Numero Group. Yoruba harmony over funk grooves, decades ahead of their time.

Angola's Bonga, singing the song that named his exile. Angola 72/74 on Lusafrica. Semba as refusal.

Johnny Otis's son, a one-man band. Inspiration Information on Epic/Legacy. A cult classic that took decades to find its audience.

Nigerian highlife from Strut's Nigeria 70: No Wahala. Black precious colour, a title that says exactly what it means.

A Belgian studio group on AVCO, best known for Jungle Fever. Latin funk with a movie-theater grin.

The Last Poets on On The Subway. When the revolution comes, it will bring its own drum. Harlem's forebears of hip-hop.

High priestess of soul. Sang Langston Hughes. Sang the movement. Sang what everyone else was too afraid to say.

The organization of the Montgomery bus boycott, captured on Smithsonian Folkways. A freedom song with the grain of a field recording.