The Rough Guide to Undiscovered World

The Rough Guide to Un dis cove red World is a showcase compilation. It is the CD companion to record label World Music Network’s Battle of the Bands competition. To keep in step with technological evolution, the label offers unsigned bands the chance to upload a track onto their website, and then use their nous across the social media platforms to coax music lovers into listening and then voting for their track. Every quarter, the one with the most votes becomes the Battle of the Bands winner with, of course, an ensuing publicity boost.

It’s a neat way of the label finding new talent, keeping up to speed with listeners’ tastes and raising the profile of otherwise largely unheard musicians. This compilation reveals the eclectic results of the experiment. Previous winners such as Polish folk-jazz band Chlopcy Kontra Basia, Senegalese griot Amadou Diagne and Cypriot rembetiko band Trio Tekke are present. There are also names who have built a significant reputation, such as Gambian ritti player Juldeh Camara, who is one half of JuJu with Justin Adams, here with fiddler Griselda Sanderson in another collaborative project, and the pan-Ethiopian Krar Collective. Some of the finest moments on the album are from the more obscure artists, such as the Scandinavian-Zimbabwean-Mozambican fusion of Monoswezi, the Yunnan folk fusion of Shanren, and the weirdly wonderful Suaramantra from the isle of Lombok. It does strike one that this is a talent contest in which the most social media-savvy rise to the top. But it is a richly varied set of sounds nonetheless.