The rustic Wiltshire village of Box in the Cotswolds could hardly be more quintessentially English. The Rev W Awdry, who wrote the Thomas the Tank Engine books, lived here 100 years ago and its country lanes, bucolic fields and ancient stone buildings have remained pretty much unchanged ever since – apart, that is, from the village mill, converted by Peter Gabriel in the late 1980s into the Real World Studios. These reissued albums were all recorded there between the studio’s opening in 1989 and 1995 by six acts who between them created a little piece of Africa under leaden English skies. They often worked in tandem with some of the top producers in Western pop music, working in the studio known as The Big Room, with its open plan design with no separation between artist and producer, and the ducks on the old mill pond outside visible from its panoramic windows.

First to be recorded was 1989’s Songs for the Poor Man by Tanzania’s Remmy Ongala & Orchestre Super Matimila. Co-produced by Dave Bottrill (Peter Gabriel, Smashing Pumpkins), it’s all sparkling Congolese soukous grooves given an East African twist, surfing on the ringing sound of three guitarists, laced with splashes of funk, soul and Latin on their first ever recording outside Africa, with lyrics in English as well as Swahili about poverty, corruption and social justice, sung in Ongala’s splendidly rasping voice. Recorded following 1992’s WOMAD festival, Farafina’s Fasou Denou can make a reasonable claim to being the most powerful of these six reissues. Produced by one-time Miles Davis drummer Billy Cobham and Daniel Lanois (whose A-list clients range from U2 to Bob Dylan), the percussion ensemble from Burkina Faso laid down a captivating set of griot magic in which thundering percussion – with Cobham taking to the drums to join the onslaught on the explosive ‘Bi Mousso’ – underpins the subtler textures of flute, kora, soukou (single-string fiddle) and balafon.

SE Rogie’s Dead Men Don’t Smoke Marijuana was the final album of the veteran Sierra Leonean singer-guitarist’s long career and released only weeks before his death at the age of 68. Producer Tchad Blake (Crowded House, the Bangles, Peter Gabriel etc) framed a warm intimacy around Rogie’s syncopated rhythms, finger-picked guitar and baritone vocals, buttressed sympathetically by Danny Thompson on double bass.

The Master Musicians of Jajouka journeyed from their village in Morocco’s Rif Mountains to Wiltshire in 1995 to record Jajouka Between the Mountains. Captured live before a small audience, the album consists of three long tracks, each around 20 minutes, voices merging with strings, flute and the oboe-like ghaita, healing the soul with the music’s hypnotic trance rhythms. The 1995 post-WOMAD recording week at Real World was a bountiful one, for it produced two more fine albums. Senegalese singer Omar Pene and his group Super Diamono were also recorded in a live session on Direct from Dakar. For a while Pene rivalled Youssou N’Dour as the king of the syncopated rhythms of mbalax, and here Diamono are in party mood – heavy on the horns, with touches of reggae and jazz guitar, as Pene’s deep, potent voice can be heard to thrilling effect on songs such as ‘Soweto’ and anti-war anthem ‘Xamiene’.

Finally, Nigeria’s King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal I (who now records under the name K1 De Ultimate), having just played a spectacular set at WOMAD, arrived at Real World’s 1995 recording week with his 16-piece band. The result was another storming set of turbo-charged fuji music, all polyrhythms, Yoruba chants and trance-like beats. Golden memories from what, with the benefit of hindsight, now seems like a golden era.