The Top of the World CD includes tracks from Songlines Music Award-winning Portuguese band Deolinda; Irish instrumentalists Lúnasa; Parisian North African ten-piece Orchestre National de Barbès; LA R’n’B and rock from Los Lobos; bassy Maori beats specialists Wai and Iranian classical vocalist Ali Reza Ghorbani, among others.

The main editorial features include:

• AfroCubism – The story about how this Mali-Cuba concept album accidentally led to the release of the Buena Vista Social Club.

• Kurdish Music – An alarming report about the continuing marginalisation of Kurdish music and musicians in Turkey.

• Syriana – Luscious Middle Eastern soundscapes get a thoroughly modern reworking on the latest East-meets-West project.

• Tools of the Trade: The Afghan Rubab – Unveiling the history behind Afghanistan’s national instrument.

• Alim Qasimov – The singer and reluctant musical ambassador of Azerbaijan talks about the poetry of his music, prior to his UK visit.

• Sounding Out Bristol – all the best places to see and hear music in the gateway to England’s West Country.

• Beginner’s Guide to Ethiopian legend Mahmoud Ahmed.

• Postcard from Carriacou, Grenada.

• Folklandia Festival, the Baltic sea.

• Backpage from Beirut, Lebanon.

• My World – Indian composer AR Rahman.

• Grooves – Penguin Café Orchestra’s Arthur Jeffes, Scottish folk singer Karine Polwart and Polish world music writer and festival programmer Marek Garztecki.

• News, including Dispatches USA from California.

• Reviews of the latest CD, DVD and World Cinema releases.

The October 2010 issue of Songlines – on sale September 3 – features a free covermount CD packed full of the best new sounds from around the world, plus 5 tracks selected by Indian composer AR Rahman.

The covermount CD includes tracks from Songlines Music Award-winning Portuguese band Deolinda; Irish instrumentalists Lúnasa; Parisian North African ten-piece Orchestre National de Barbès; LA R’n’B and rock from Los Lobos; bassy Maori beats specialists Wai and Iranian classical vocalist Ali Reza Ghorbani, among others.

Pick up your copy here on the website, at selected WHSmith’s and at all good record retailers. Feast your ears on these all-new tracks:

* Syriana ‘Road to Damascus’ on Real World

* Deolinda ‘Um Contra o Outro’ on World Connection

* Los Lobos ‘Mujer Ingrata’ on Proper Records

* Orchestra National de Barbès ‘Sidi Yahia-Bnet Paris’ on Le Chant du Monde

* The Old Dance School ‘The Enlli Light’ on Transition Records

* Wai ‘Hine-Te-Ihorangi’ on Jayrem Records

* Samy Izy ‘Bala’ on Network Medien

* Lúnasa ‘Unapproved Road’ on Lúnasa Records

* Tim O’Brien ‘All I Want’ on Howdy Skies Records

* Ali Reza Ghorbani ‘Dar Achegi’ on Accords Croisés

Plus AR Rahman’s playlist:

* Värttinä ‘Riena’ on Real World

* The Laya Project/Nagore Sufis ‘Ya Allah’ on EarthSync

* Susheela Raman ‘Mamavatu’ on Narada

* 1 Giant Leap feat Baaba Maal ‘Dunya Salam’ on Palm Pictures

* Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party ‘Maki Madni’ on Real World

He is set to present Music Planet – a programme being created in conjunction with BBC One’s Human Planet. Alongside co-presenter Lucy Durán, he will visit more remote outposts of world music in the footsteps of his legendary North Korean and Iraqi sojourns.

Music Planet is being touted by the station as the “most significant and ambitious world music project ever” and will include throat singing in Greenland, shamanic music from Mongolia and the sounds of the remote Bat People of Papa New Guinea.

Of a trip to Thailand, Kershaw had this to say: “I cheerily risked incineration at a rocket festival in Thailand to take our Radio 3 audience into the fiery thick of the action.” Watch this space.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio3

The one-day event will feature performances by kora players Seckou Keita, Kadialy Kouyaté, Jali Burama Mbye, Diabel Cissoko, Sura Susso, Modou Cissoko and Jali Keba Susso as well as African percussion-based highlife dance band Yiraba, among others.

As well as performing, the kora musicians will also lead workshops on kora playing, drumming, dance, storytelling and song.

Get the latest news on the Brighton Kora Festival facebook website.

The island nation’s most famous son left the country when he was nine and moved to the US, but his ties to his homeland have remained strong. He founded the Yele Haiti Foundation, which has done much to ease the suffering of Haitians in the aftermath of the January earthquake.

In 2004, the ex-Fugees star released the album Sak Pasé Presents: Welcome to Haïti (Creole 101), in which most of the songs are in his native Haitian Creole language.

On January 4, 1804, Haiti threw off French colonial rule to become the first free black republic in the world, and the second independent state in the western hemisphere. Its subsequent history has been tragic, and whoever the next president is will have an onerous job on their hands. Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, a situation compounded by the devastating earthquake that hit the country. If Jean does make his international stardom translate into ballot box turnout in a nation where only 10% of those eligible to vote did so last time round, he will have one of the toughest political posts on the planet.

http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/

CNN’s new arts programme, icon, worked in conjunction with Songlines to select 20 of the greatest artists in the last 50 years from all corners of the earth.

CNN came to Songlines keen to get expert help in including non-Anglo Saxon representation in the list of artists, creating a truly global list of music icons.

World music icons on the list include Algerian rai legend Khaled and the late queen of Arab song, Oum Kalthoum, the late Mama Africa Miriam Makeba and Senegalese star Youssou N’Dour, Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle and the late Pakistani qawwali innovator Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late Taiwanese-Chinese pop icon Teresa Teng and the late Hong Kong founder of Cantopop Leslie Cheung, Brazilian tropicalia linchpin Gilberto Gil, Colombian rocker Juanes and the late salsa queen Celia Cruz. And of course, the biggest star to ever hit the mainstream from the ranks of world music, reggae legend Bob Marley.

They rub shoulders with US giants Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan, and UK 60s supergroups the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

icon will use your votes to build up an interactive gallery of cultural icons online in various fields, as they initiate monthly votes in different artistic fields.

The first gallery – of the top five musical icons – will be unveiled on August 25.

Get voting at http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/28/icon.music.vote