This year’s most exhilarating newcomers hailed from Soweto. BCUC’s album Emakhosini offers a dramatic, often intimidating blend of ancient South African chants, township influences and contemporary bass riffs matched against Kgomotso Mokone’s cool, soulful vocals. In a great year for female singers, Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara proved with her second solo album Fenfo that she can cover anything from Afro-pop to blues and soul, and is surely capable of far more. The best north African music came from Tunisia, on Ammar 808’s album Maghreb United, which mixed regional styles with a blend of local instruments and percussion-heavy electronica, with exhilarating results.

Across the African diaspora, two unexpected delights came from expat Haitian singer-songwriters reworking the music of their homeland. On Siltane, the powerful, soulful Moonlight Benjamin treated new and old Vodou songs to a blues-rock guitar backing, while on Radyo Siwèl, guitarist Mélissa Laveaux used much the same technique to revive protest songs from the era of the US invasion. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, Trinidadian veteran Calypso Rose included an inspired treatment of Nat King Cole’s Calypso Blues on So Calypso!

There was more excellent and varied music from the Middle East, where strong Palestinian releases ranged from the electronic hip-hop and traditional dance music on 47Soul’s Balfron Promise to the intricate oud playing on Le Trio Joubran’s The Long March. From Istanbul, there was folk-rock and electronica on Gaye Su Akyol’s Istikrarli Hayal Hakikattir, an experimental set influenced both by Nirvana and Turkish folk music, that switched from pained, personal balladry to a mighty, timely plea for tolerance.

The best European and UK releases included Mari Kalkun’s Ilmamotsan, a gently mesmerising set from Estonia, and Kulku, from the British-Finnish-Armenian band SANS. And then there was Soar, the exquisite second album from the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora virtuoso Seckou Keita. Inspired by the ospreys that travel freely between west Africa and Wales (in contrast to humans), it included a memorable excerpt from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Themes of migration and freedom were also central to Flight, an exuberant return from Afro Celt Sound System. Then there’s one I missed: Susheela Raman’s Ghost Gamelan, featuring the unearthly sounds of a Javanese gamelan band.

The one downer was what Peter Gabriel called an “alarming” rise in the number of great international artists refused visas to perform in the UK, even for major events like Womad – a situation that could become even worse with Brexit. Brilliant new music is being created around the world: the creation of unnecessary barriers is a tragedy.

Robin Denselow’s world albums of the year

1. BCUC: Emakhosini (Buda Musique)

2. Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita: Soar (bendigedig)

3. Fatoumata Diawara: Fenfo (Wagram/Montuno)

4. Moonlight Benjamin: Siltane (Ma Case)

5. Gaye Su Akyol: Istikrarli Hayal Hakikattir (Glitterbeat)

6. Mélissa Laveaux: Radyo Siwèl (No Format!)

7. 47Soul: Balfran Promise (Cooking Vinyl)

8. Susheela Raman: Ghost Gamelan (Naïve)

9. Mari Kalkun: Ilmamotsan (Nordic Notes)

10. Ammar 808: Maghreb United (Glitterbeat)