Yet for all the fantastic singers and bands able to exchange sunny polyphony for dollars and awards in the west, there's often no end to the suffering and poverty back home. Drop the Debt (Wrasse, £10.99) is an upbeat but sharp reminder of the grief caused by the deregulatory policies of the IMF and the World Bank.

"You only gave me 10," sings Chico Cesar, backed by Les Fabulous Trobadors, "and you want 100 back" on one of the best tracks, Il faut payer (devo e nao nego). Cosas pa' pensar, by Colombian band Toto la Momposina, has a chorus that digs deep into your skull. Lenine's Rosebud is superb - simple and funky - with tight beats and spooky backing vocals playing on the words "dolorous" and "dollars".

The compilation was put together by François Mauger to support the France-based Dette et Développement platform. Other outstanding contributors include El Hadj N'Diaye, Cesaria Evora and Africa South. Its "right-on" credentials may scare a few off, but Drop the Debt is a quirky compilation that is unashamedly populist, danceable and free of gloom. "Paris, New York, Tokyo, Berlin... " rap Meiway on Assez, "We've given you more than you'll ever give."

Joseph and One (Wrasse, £10.99) is an entertaining "concept album" from a group of Arab and Jewish musicians. Led by guitarist Nitzan Peri, and conceived and assembled in the period of hope following the Oslo agreement, its starting point is the kinship of the names Joseph and Youssef.

The title track is a fiddle-led tune with the transitions and tempo changes of a folk-rock epic; The Prophet is a Fool is a meditative piece for violin, oud and guitar, with soprano by Hungarian saxophonist Gerge Barcza.

The Usual Agreement quotes from Leviticus: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This is a mainly instrumental piece, featuring more great oud (Nizar Rohana) and violin (Nitsan-Khen Raz'el). The unison vocals near the end are a bit ropey, to be honest, but the fact that Israeli and Palestinian performers are in the same room, let alone the same key, is cause for celebration. The band tours the UK in July/August.

Guitarist GP Hall has mastered the art of creating solo improvised performances that are compelling, highly musical and other-worldly, augmenting his instruments with preparations, effects and even electric shaver motors.

He could play at a world music festival, a jazz series or a rock dive. He would probably go down a storm at All Tomorrow's Parties. Sure, there are plenty of guitarists who can play solo for hours on end, producing every conceivable sound through every available effects pedal. (Several music shops are staffed entirely by such people.) But Hall has the gift of turning these elements into coherent structured pieces, demonstrated by his impressive (if over-long) album Industrial Blue (Burning Shed, £10.99).

River Flow is an eight-minute concerto for Spanish guitar, accompanied by an orchestral collage of splash cymbals and industrial noises. Hall's pieces are pastoral, evoking the chirrup of birds who have learnt the song of car alarms, and the grunt of a badly maintained bus.

Titles are rarely literal: Tsunami is vivid and detailed rather than an unrestrained tidal wave; Charmouth Beach sounds more urban than coastal. Heat on the Horizon features more faultless acoustic, a "library music" track squatting by a dusty road, waiting to flag down a passing drama-documentary.

Sorrow pits loud acoustic against sustained electrics and reverberating woodblocks. Maybe it doesn't go anywhere, but it makes going nowhere sound pretty good