Entering
This week’s list is 137 songs. Following the credits song by song, the same surnames kept turning up: Kuti, Marsalis, Gil. There is a son leading his father’s band; an uncle, a father and a son who each landed on the list separately; and a son and grandsons who put their father’s and grandfather’s surname in their group’s name. The names of colleagues who have passed on showed up too: Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一), Yukihiro Takahashi (高橋幸宏), Arlindo Cruz.
Some names from last week’s map come back this week in different seats. Ezra Collective’s drummer returns as the producer of a Lagos record, Haruomi Hosono with a new edition of the same album, and Standing On The Corner through a solo single by one of its former members. So this time I drew the map along the lines of the people who carry things on. It starts in Lagos, passes through the UK and Europe, goes by way of Tokyo and Rio, and ends in New York. Twenty-three songs.
Africa
Lagos — Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, 「DJB」
Seun Kuti is Fela Kuti’s youngest son, and Egypt 80 is the band Fela formed anew between the late 1970s and early ’80s after Africa 70 broke up. Seun played in the band from around the age of nine, and has led it since his father died in 1997. 「DJB」 is the lead single from the new album [Na Dem], due November 6. Back in June, 「Na Dem」, featuring Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, came out first. The album’s producer is Femi Koleoso, drummer and leader of Ezra Collective. The man who opened the first song on last week’s map has this time made a record for a Lagos band. Seun Kuti has called the album a call to resist, to stay awake, and to hold on to our humanity. With the band his father built, in the way his father sang, he is telling the story of now.
Berlin × Lagos × Bamako — Jembaa Groove, 「Waka」 (feat. Fatoumata Diawara, The Cavemen)
Jembaa Groove is a Berlin band on Hanover’s Agogo Records. According to the label, it was started at the end of 2020 by German bassist and producer Yannick Nolting and Ghanaian percussionist Eric Owusu, who has played with Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas and Orlando Julius. The four-track EP [Be A Lover], released September 18, was made with musicians from Berlin, Lagos, London and Amsterdam, and 「Waka」 is the closing track, number 4. Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara and the Nigerian brother band The Cavemen take part. The Cavemen are the brothers bassist Kingsley Okorie and drummer Benjamin James, and Kingsley co-produced three of the EP’s four tracks. London soul singer Azekel also appears on another song on the EP. That name comes up once more in the UK chapter.
Toubab Dialaw × Sweden — Wau Wau Collectif, 「Fonkal Say Wadiour」
A gathering of Senegalese and Swedish musicians that began in 2018 in Toubab Dialaw, a seaside village near Dakar. At its center are Karl-Jonas Winqvist, a Swedish musician who runs the label Sing A Song Fighter, and Arouna Kane, a Senegalese bassist and studio engineer. Of the 2021 debut [Yaral Sa Doom], Bandcamp Daily wrote that Winqvist, together with Kane, led the recording in a way that encouraged free ideas and improvisation. The new album [Teranga] came out on Sahel Sounds in Portland, Oregon, with twenty-six musicians taking part. 「Fonkal Say Wadiour」 is track 4 of twelve. The producers are the two of them, Kane and Winqvist.
Benin City — Rema, 「Oh No」
Born in 2000 in Benin City, Nigeria, Rema is a singer signed to Mavin and Jonzing World. His 「Calm Down」 remix with Selena Gomez reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and his album [Heis] was nominated for Best Global Music Album at the 2025 Grammys. 「Oh No」 is a single released September 11, not yet tied to an album. Also on the list is 「Fancy」, sung by PaBrymo, a newcomer based in the same Benin City, with singer Tay Iwar. From one city, a singer who has climbed the world charts and a newcomer who has just put out an EP are on the same week’s list.
United Kingdom
Manchester — Daley, 「Consequences」 (feat. Keyon Harrold)
Daley, the singer who made his name on Gorillaz’s 「Doncamatic」, released his third album [Strange Nature] on September 18, nine years after the last. 「Consequences」 is track 4, featuring trumpeter Keyon Harrold from Ferguson, Missouri, with South London drummer Yussef Dayes on drums. On track 9, 「Compass」, Robert Glasper plays piano, and both it and track 5, 「Falling Deep」, are on the list. Marsha Ambrosius and Blue Lab Beats also appear across the album. Daley described the album this way: life doesn’t always unfold the way we predict, hope or expect. Coming back after nine years without an album, he called in a South London drummer and a trumpeter from Missouri together.
Leeds — Gotts Street Park, 「Flowers」 (with Pip Millett)
The Leeds trio Gotts Street Park is Josh Crocker on bass and production, Tom Henry on keys and Joe Harris on guitar, and the name comes from Gotts Street in Leeds and Gotts Park in Armley. They released their debut [On The Inside] on Blue Flowers in 2023. 「Flowers」 is a preview of their second album [Somewhere Between], due October 16 on Play It Again Sam, and was recorded at Chairworks Studios outside Leeds. They reunite with singer Pip Millett after 「Change My Ways」 in 2020, 「Got To Be Good」 in 2023, and 「Fool For Love」. 「Flowers」 came out of the sessions for Millett’s album. Millett said the song is a reminder that bad days don’t last forever. Stereofox called it laid-back Sunday soul energy.
Dallas → Netherlands × London — Sandra St. Victor, 「Moonchild」 (feat. Kaidi Tatham)
Sandra St. Victor was born in Dallas, raised in Brooklyn, and now lives in the Netherlands. She was a founding vocalist of The Family Stand, and has worked with Prince, Chaka Khan, Curtis Mayfield and Tina Turner. [Eleven], out September 18 on Mother Tongue Records, is her first solo album in more than ten years. 「Moonchild」 is track 3, a new reading of a Captain Sky song, and came out first this summer on the 12-inch 「Life / Moonchild」. Her collaborator Kaidi Tatham is one of the people who built West London broken beat with Bugz in the Attic and with Dego in 2000Black. Mark de Clive-Lowe, a regular Mother Tongue collaborator, also appears on the album’s 「Dizzy」. One outlet wrote that Tatham wove in intricate broken beat like a tapestry. Chaka Khan’s name comes up again in the North America chapter.
Zurich × London — Okvsho, 「Roottree」 (with Tenderlonious)
Okvsho are the Zurich brothers Georg Kiss and Christoph Kiss. They split drums and keys, call themselves the “SoundCloud generation,” and say they came into jazz through hip-hop. They released [Frozen Flashes] on September 18 on their own label, Current Moves. It was made by resampling improvised sessions, some recorded in London, and weaving them into songs. 「Roottree」 is track 7 (spelled 「Rootree」 on the vinyl), featuring Tenderlonious, the London saxophone and flute player who founded the 22a label. Track 6, 「La Joconde」, and track 8, 「Place of Two」, are on the list too. Azekel appears on another song on this album — the same name we saw earlier on Jembaa Groove’s EP in Berlin. On a label the brothers built, the improvisations the brothers stacked up became one album.
Continental Europe
Ghent — Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul, 「Googoo Gaga」
A duo from Ghent, Belgium. They released their 2022 debut [Topical Dancer] on DEEWEE, the label Soulwax founded. 「Googoo Gaga」 is a single released September 16, their first song since that album. The producers are Soulwax’s brothers David & Stephen Dewaele. The music video, directed by Lennert Madou, is based on De Mammelokker, a figure from a folk tale handed down in Ghent. The two described the song like this: they say it takes a whole village to raise a child, but really you’re doing it alone — a song that embraces all of it, being exhausted, giving yourself away, being overwhelmed. The title reads like a baby’s babbling.
Roskilde → London — Marie Dahlstrom, 「Joined」 (with Butcher Brown)
A singer born in Roskilde, Denmark, and working in London. She released her third album [MARIE] on September 18 on her own label, JFH Records. 「Joined」 is track 5, with Butcher Brown, the jazz-funk five-piece from Richmond, Virginia. Butcher Brown’s drummer Corey Fonville was the album’s main producer. Dahlstrom told how the song began: she left a voice memo on piano and sent it to Corey, and the song is the story of her second son, Levi, being born and joining the family together in a new, stronger way. The very next track, 「Take It Out On You」, is also on the list. If the Ghent duo sang about the fatigue of raising a child, the London singer sang about the way a child binds a family.
Athens — Σtella, 「Belinda」
Athens singer-songwriter Stella is on Sub Pop, and writes the first letter of her name as the Greek letter sigma. 「Belinda」, her first single since the 2025 album [Adagio], came out September 16. She produced it with Rodaidh McDonald, who has worked with Jamie xx and Weyes Blood, and Rafael Cohen of the band !!! took part in the recording. Cohen was also on [Adagio]. Wonderland magazine wrote of [Adagio] that it is like eating olives while drinking wine on a clear summer night. She plays Athens’ Borderline Festival on October 9. There is also a song called 「Stella」 in the Tokyo chapter, but the two have no connection.
East Asia
Tokyo — Shun Ishiwaka Trio+1, 「Old Friends II」
Drummer Shun Ishiwaka went through the Sapporo Junior Jazz School, graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts, and played the drums for the film [BLUE GIANT]. The trio he formed with Yusei Takahashi (高橋佑成) on piano and Marty Holoubek on bass released its second album [Mabui] on Universal on September 2. Their first album, [Live at ALFIE “Temporal Cubic”], was nominated in the jazz album category at Music Awards Japan 2026. “Mabui” means soul in the Okinawan language. It was recorded in a single day, March 11 this year, and Ishiwaka wrote every song. Tenor saxophonist Tomoaki Baba (馬場智章), who guests on every track, has been a friend since the Sapporo days and also played sax on [BLUE GIANT]. Including Holoubek, who came from Adelaide via Melbourne to Tokyo in 2018, all four are members of Terumasa Hino’s (日野皓正) group. 「Old Friends II」 is track 5.
Tokyo — Haruomi Hosono, 「Stella (Yours Sincerely Version)」
Last week this map had Hosono’s new album [Yours Sincerely]. A week later, on September 18, a digital edition of the same album with one song added, [Yours Sincerely (Stella Edition)], came out without notice. The added track 11 is 「Stella」. The original was on [LOOPHOLE], the 2003 album by SKETCH SHOW, the duo Hosono formed in 2002 with Yukihiro Takahashi. Takahashi is no longer with us. Japanese music outlet BARKS described the new version as a song filled with quiet guitar and voice, writing that it is steeped in memories of friends who have gone before. To match the edition, the cover also changed, to a picture with stars in the night sky added over a black background. The one left of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s three sang again, alone, a song he made with an old bandmate.
Germany × Tokyo — Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto, 「Conversation 1」
NOTON, the label of Alva Noto — that is, Carsten Nicolai — released [12 Conversations] on September 18. It records music the two exchanged between November and December 2022, while Sakamoto was making his last solo album, [12]. It was not work planned for release from the start. Sakamoto died in March 2023. The two had released records together since [Vrioon] in the early 2000s, and also made the music for the film [The Revenant] together. Nicolai wrote that even within this final exchange, plans for the future kept taking shape, and that Sakamoto firmly believed in the power of new ideas even knowing there was an end. On the same day, his old bandmate Hosono re-released a song made with a departed friend, and Sakamoto’s longtime collaborator released the two men’s last conversation as a record.
Tokyo × Seoul — 7co, 「sayonara radio」 (feat. oceanfromtheblue)
7co is the duo of vocalist Nanako Ashida (芦田菜名子) and producer RYUJA, who made their major-label debut this summer with 「猫じゃらし」, the opening theme for season 2 of the anime 『正反対な君と僕』. 「sayonara radio」, out September 16, features Korean R&B singer-songwriter oceanfromtheblue. It is 7co’s first song with a Korean musician. The two acts met at a Melon event in Korea in 2025, and made the song apart, trading emails. The lyrics are by oceanfromtheblue and Nanako Ashida, the music by the two of them with RYUJA, and it is sung in Japanese, Korean and English. What the “sayonara” and the “radio” of the title point to is for you to find out by listening.
Latin America
Rio — Gilsons, 「Semeia (Remix)」 (with Mulú)
Gilsons is a trio formed in Rio in 2018. José Gil is the son of Gilberto Gil and Flora Gil and also the drummer in his father’s band; Francisco Gil is the son of Preta Gil; and João Gil is the son of Nara Gil and Gilberto’s first grandchild. One is a son, two are grandsons. The original 「Semeia」 was on their second album [Eu Vejo Luz Em Maior Proporção Do Que Eu Vejo A Escuridão], released in March, which José Gil produced. On September 1, according to Spotify, a remix featuring Mulú came out as a single. The Brazilian outlet Alma Preta wrote that it is a song about continuity over time and about care. On last week’s map, the grandfather was releasing the live recordings of his farewell tour one volume at a time. “Semeia” is Portuguese for “sow.”
Salvador × Madureira — Luedji Luna, 「O Bem」 (with Arlindo Cruz)
Luedji Luna is a singer from Salvador, Bahia. She debuted in 2017 with [Um Corpo no Mundo], and in 2025 released two albums, [Um Mar Pra Cada Um] and [Antes Que A Terra Acabe], less than a week apart. 「O Bem」 is originally a song Arlindo Cruz wrote with Délcio Luiz and put on his 2011 album [Batuques e Romances]. Arlindo Cruz was born in 1958 in Madureira, Rio, spent twelve years in the samba group Fundo de Quintal, and died on August 8, 2025, at sixty-six. This version, with both their names side by side, came out in early August this year. How Arlindo’s voice was brought in has not yet been confirmed in label materials. A singer from Bahia sang the song of a Rio samba composer ahead of the first anniversary of his death.
North America
New Orleans — Branford Marsalis Quartet, 「Autumn Serenade」 (with Dianne Reeves)
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis moved back to New Orleans in 2024. His quartet released [Dedicated To You] on Blue Note on September 18 with singer Dianne Reeves, who was born in Detroit and raised in Denver. The album replays the six songs of 1963’s [John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman] plus some of Coltrane’s instrumentals, and is timed to Coltrane’s centennial. Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass and Justin Faulkner on drums play with them. 「Autumn Serenade」 is the first song on the tracklist Blue Note released. The UK jazz blog Marlbank gave it five stars, writing that it completely overshadows the Coltrane tributes currently out there. In the next seat after this song is his nephew.
New York — Slauson Malone 1, 「Porcelain」
Slauson Malone 1 is the name of Jasper Marsalis, son of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. To Branford, he is a nephew. Until the late 2010s he was in the Brooklyn collective Standing On The Corner — the group that, on last week’s map, brought Solange and Sonia Sanchez together on one song. He signed to Warp in 2023 and released [EXCELSIOR], and on September 15, as his first new song in three years, he covered 「Porcelain」 from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ [Californication]. Stereogum said he pushed a song that was already soft, slow and minimal a little further toward the strange. And this week’s list also includes Billy Strayhorn’s 「A Midnight in Paris」 (listed on Spotify as 「Midnight in Paris」) from [Essentially Ellington 2027] by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which Wynton leads. Uncle, father and son gathered on one list, each with their own record.
New York — Tyreek McDole, 「she’s alive」
Haitian-American baritone Tyreek McDole graduated from Oberlin and won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2023. According to his own bio, in 2018, as a high school student, he received an outstanding vocalist award at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition — the annual competition held by Jazz at Lincoln Center that the previous song’s record came from. 「she’s alive」 is track 3 and the first single from his second album [Chroma], due November 6 on Artwork Records, produced by trumpeter Theo Croker. It is a cover of a song by André 3000. Critic Will Friedwald, in the liner notes to his debut, called him the jazz voice of a generation.
LA — Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, 「Compassion」 (feat. Flying Lotus, Immanuel Wilkins, David Virelles)
Raised in Topanga Canyon, LA, and trained on viola at USC, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson wrote and conducted the J Dilla tribute [Suite for Ma Dukes] in 2009. [ANANTA: Spirit of Coltrane], due October 30 on Impulse!, is a Coltrane tribute with twenty-one participants, including Shabaka Hutchings, Brandee Younger, Jeff Parker and Joel Ross. The first single, 「Compassion」, is track 2, a piece Coltrane put on [Meditations] in 1966. Flying Lotus, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and Cuban pianist David Virelles join. The same year as Branford above, it honors the same man. Also on the list, from the same LA, is 「Mama」, which Dexter Story made with Sudan Archives and Kamasi Washington.
Washington, DC — Meshell Ndegeocello, 「With God on Our Side」 (with Bill Callahan, Chris Thile)
Meshell Ndegeocello’s [Synonym], due October 2 on Blue Note, is an album of fifteen classics sung again as duets with other singers. The closing song and final pre-release single, 「With God on Our Side」, is the song Bob Dylan put on [The Times They Are a-Changin’] in 1964, sung here with Bill Callahan and Chris Thile. Ndegeocello said Callahan’s voice is mesmerizing and draws people in. Co-producer David Gamson made her first two albums, and also produced 「Never Miss the Water」, the 1996 song by Chaka Khan and Ndegeocello. That same Chaka Khan also takes part in [Synonym], and on September 18 released her own album, [Chakzilla]. 「Cool You Down」, with Sia, is on the list too. Two people who met on one song thirty years ago put each other’s names up again in the same week.
Philadelphia × Backwoodz — Curly Castro, 「Black Don’t Crack」
Philadelphia rapper Curly Castro is also active with PremRock as ShrapKnel. On September 18 he released [Yaphet], his first solo album in five years, on Backwoodz Studioz, the label billy woods founded. The title comes from the actor Yaphet Kotto, and the album is grounded in 1970s blaxploitation film. Milwaukee’s Locust produced the whole album. The opener, 「Black Don’t Crack」, is a six-minute posse cut in which New Jersey’s Fatboi Sharif, Columbus’s Blueprint, Baltimore’s Brian Ennals, Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based SKECH185, Seattle’s AJ Suede, and billy woods come in one after another. Stereogum wrote that it sounds like the Backwoodz Studioz Avengers assembling. This year Ennals released the album [Boatshoes] with producer Blockhead, and 「Trouble Trouble」, from [Trouble Mountain] — which that same Blockhead will release in November with Aesop Rock, his partner since college — is also on this week’s list.
Closing
Laying the twenty-three songs out by city, the surnames that first caught my eye were what remained. Seun Kuti leads his father’s band; Jasper Marsalis’s single sits between his father’s orchestra and his uncle’s quartet; Gilberto Gil’s son and grandsons use their father’s and grandfather’s surname as their group’s name. Haruomi Hosono sang again, alone, a song made with a friend who went before him, and on the same day Alva Noto released his last conversation with Ryuichi Sakamoto as a record.
Gathering the songs of people who carry things on doesn’t mean the order is fixed. Shuffle the list and Tokyo comes after Lagos, and Philadelphia after Ghent. That order is for the listener to decide.
Next week — I don’t know whose name will come back in a different seat.