All music is world music if you live in a world, right? And 2024 proved this in abundance — even in a time when our headlines and social feeds show us the opposite of unity, constantly. It may have been a terrible year on so many fronts, but we’ve at least got a planet full of beautiful, inspiring, action-provoking and unifying music to help us pull together and pull through … whatever that may mean for each of us. If our next chapter gets to be scored to a soundtrack of Project Gemini’s Middle Eastern-tinged Euro-funk, Tony Allen waving hi from the great beyond in a collab with Foals’ Yannis Philippakis (as Yannis and the Yaw), Bruno Berle’s electro-tinged São Paulo lounge vibes, and Ibibio Sound Machine’s Eno Williams dipping her toes in Eighties synth … we may just be a little more OK.
| Artist | Album | Label | |
| 1 | Project Gemini | Colours and Light | Mr Bongo |
| 2 | Yannis and the Yaw | Lagos Paris London | Transgressive |
| 3 | Ezra Collective | Dance, No One’s Watching | Partisan |
| 4 | Bruno Berle | No Reino dos Afetos 2 | Far Out |
| 5 | Four Tet | Three | Temporary Residence |
| 6 | Ghost Funk Orchestra | A Trip To The Moon | Karma Chief |
| 7 | Benny Trokan | Do You Still Think Of Me | Wick |
| 8 | Kelly Finnigan | A Lover Is Born | Colemine |
| 9 | Ibibio Sound Machine | Pull The Rope | Merge |
| 10 | Kit Sebastian | New Internationale | Brainfeeder |
