Hear how world music connects to basic human experience. SRE’s best-yet cultural convergence is a companion album to Music of Strangers, a documentary of Ma’s pan-cultural troubadours by Oscar- and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville. This trip includes Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens, Gregory Porter, Toumani Diabaté, Sarah Jarosz, Abigail Washburn and a few Americana classics amid far-flung ethnomusicological riches. Among the bejeweled highlights: “Ichicila,” with Diabaté’s spangled kora and Balla Kouyaté’s warmer balafon; the rapturous vocals and sitar of Shujaat Khan on “Madhoushi”; Giddens and Romani gypsy musicians re-casting the blues of “St. James Infirmary.” For all the globetrotting, it’s all ultimately about the difference and commonality of home, as Washburn proves on Bohemian Antonín Dvořák’s beloved adaptation of the black spiritual “Goin’ Home.”
