As per the discussion now prefacing the world music index page here, I've created this general page for more recent CD additions (i.e. since July 2015).
This is a general purpose listing, in that CDs will not be broken down by culture or genre, but merely collected for reference. Discussion will be minimal to nonexistent here, although some discussion can be found in CD files themselves, or sometimes in entries over in my jazz or improvised music series. (The latter will be interspersed with many entries concerning contemporary improvisation from the US, Europe & elsewhere.)
Particularly now that I'm reorganizing this page after ten years, adding more recordings discovered via commercial streaming, there's a question of how to present the material intelligibly. At the moment, the majority of the citations here are (again) of historical performances, although — as originally intended for this space — some are actually new albums (i.e. by living artists) produced subsequent to my earlier pages.
So, first the newer productions here, all available (or recently available) in CD format (plus, in many cases, streaming):
The above list is in chronological order, according to when I first encountered the album. And these are generally in good sound, i.e. recommended recordings.
It's unclear how fast this sub-list might or might not grow, but I do try to hear new productions of relevance. These can be exciting, in part because they're becoming rarer....
And then in each case, including below, the CD files will have links referring back to a historical summary in which they do not actually appear, as opposed to pointing back here. However, there are also hopefully helpful comments orienting the recording within this broader project....
I subsequently added a handful of older recordings as well, some of which had only recently appeared in print, but some of which I could've conceivably featured much earlier (but didn't notice, for one reason or another):
This section is likewise in chronological order, according to when I first encountered the album. At least originally, these items were all released on CD.
And given my current conception here, the above (CD-oriented) list might be complete, in that I've been moving to more of an online orientation....
This set of albums is then in continuity with the final selection above, i.e. without much time separating their inclusion here, but with the present list now arising from a more thorough survey of appealing items on streaming (& specifically Qobuz, where all do appear, at least as of this rewrite). This is basically a "best of" streaming list of currently available (in 2025) items — yet also in relation to my prior selection of repertory & performances:
In this case, all recordings were added at the same time, so the order is arbitrary (although I did start with the Carnatic items, for continuity). My standard was basically that these items needed to be more compelling than at least some on my prior lists. So it was a high standard, yielding a relatively short list. Of course, it remains completely possible that there are still available recordings of high interest that I've yet to notice.... (There's also no straightforward way of being notified of new releases.)
This latter exploration was also prompted & aided by work from Ellie Kerry, both in recording suggestions & maintaining a dialog about the state of discographies, as well as (in some cases) access to physical materials.... Generally speaking though, I've never touched physical materials for any item on this portion of the list. However, while I didn't use appearance on physical media as a criterion for this section, most of these recordings have indeed appeared on CD.
Unfortunately, catalog information from these streaming (& web search) resources is also often sketchy. More or clarified information is therefore welcome. Also, because these recordings relate to different music projects here (from back in the 1990s...), the formats of the different CD files can be somewhat different too, so please forgive the inconsistencies.
Brief discussions within the individual files will hopefully provide the specific circumstances around inclusion here.