The first voice is that of Asha Bhosle, the voice of a thousand Bollywood movies.

(Note: The tracks will be in this order the first time you play the mix. If you listen a second time, the tracks will be in random order. Unless you delete the 8tracks cookie first. Or use a different browser.)

Then there’s Hamza el Din, accompanying himself on a ‘tar’, a type of frame drum. Just a voice and a drum. And check out this YouTube video of him singing a song from his native Nubia. He’s accompanying himself on the ud.

Then there’s Purple Rain, by Stina Nordenstam and Red Green and You Blue by Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, featuring a teenaged Mike Oldfield on bass and the amazing Lol Coxhill on soprano sax.

For a bit of early-nineties nostalgia, there’s the hyperactive Alexander Bălănescu and his string quartet commenting on the ex-Warsaw Pact nations’ new-found liking for Democracy.

There are a number of versions of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. This piece consists of a tape loop of a tramp singing, which Bryars has given a variety of string orchestrations. My favourite version is the one where Tom Waits sings along, but at 19′ 38″ that’s a bit long to be putting on 8tracks. The version in this mix lasts a paltry 6′ 6″. As with so much of Bryars’ music, there’s a story behind it.

Next there’s Funeral Ikos by John Tavener. Unfortunately, in this recording the low basses at the bottom of the chords which end each ‘Alleluia’ are either inaudible or missing, which in the context of an audio CD could be said to be a distinction without a difference. The text is pretty wonderful, too. Here’s one of the verses:

Youth and the beauty of the body
fade at the hour of death,
and the tongue then burneth fiercely,
and the parched throat is inflamed.
The beauty of the eyes is quenched then,
the comeliness of the face all altered,
the shapeliness of the neck destroyed;
and the other parts have become numb,
nor often say:
Alleluia.

Lastly a reworking / recomposition by John Woolrich of a Monteverdi madrigal. The piece is called Ulysses Awakes and is for solo viola and strings.

I sat in a pew [at a rehearsal by the Latvian Radio Choir] and [they] started to sing the piece they were rehearsing before mine. It was something I did not know but I thought it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life. I sat still, completely overwhelmed by the richness of its harmonies, by its serenity and by the way in which it evolved – slowly but inevitably …. I resolved at that moment to include this music on the recording and enable it to be heard more widely.

Then there’s classical Iranian music from the singer Mohammed Reza Shajarian, with Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh / spike fiddle. The piece is called Avaz va Saz; the words are a poem by Sa’adi: ‘Those who give themselves to the madness of your love, free themselves from the burden of life’s worries.’

Guitar music follows, from John Fahey, Jack Rose and Carlos Paredes.

Like the first track, the last two tracks feature a male alto / countertenor: Andreas Scholl in O Jesu, nomen dulce by Heinrich Schütz and Carlos Mena in Sances’s Stabat Mater.