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A smorgasbord, then, but a thoughtfully presented one, laid out in zones which almost feel like complete courses. It starts gently, with a lovely Palestinian folk-inspired wedding song recalling the less ornate kind of Quranic chanting. I found the segue from this simple and traditional sound to Natacha Atlas & Transglobal Underground, in a track which mixes the textures and melodic style of Arabic music with an insistent western-style backbeat (global fusion, man), slightly jarring. The London-based Moroccan trio MoMo continues in similar vein, pouring Andalusian guitar, Moroccan gnawa call-and-response music, hip hoppy scratching and Manu Chao-style samples into a large cartoon receptacle painted "World Music Melting Pot".

But these are the only discordant notes. After the disappointing starter, the rest of the CD offers flavoursome and nutritious fare. The next five tracks are largely traditional in idiom and instrumentation - though of course western instruments, particularly strings, have long been part of Arabic classical tradition, and accordions and violins live comfortably alongside ouds and qanuns in this deeper-rooted musical marriage, just as singers and instrumentalists switch expertly and easily between Arabic and western tuning systems. An exception to the musical zoning is the Algerian artist Abdou, apparently known as "The Boy George of RaÔ," who crops up in the middle of the sequence. Abdou, amazingly, apparently performs regularly in Algeria in dresses and make-up, in spite of an environment where political repression jostles with religious extremism. Judging from this track, RaÔ is a kind of funk-Berber folk fusion which really works.

The traditional style gives way in the penultimate three tracks to some even more successful and convincing musical miscegenations, taking in both jazz and African overtones. The knowing, ska-slanted sound of Sudan's Abdel Gadir-Salim is a particular highlight, and Iraqi Naseer Shamma's live oud performance "From Assur to Seville," tracing the evolution of Spanish guitar from its Arabian ancestor, offering a welcome change of pace. The final track showcases the Algerian diva Warda in an archive recording, also live, which captures all the drama and emotion of the Arabian classical recitative tradition of Umm Kalthum and Muhammad Abdul Wahab.

It's refreshing to engage with Middle Eastern culture in an atmosphere of enjoyment instead of misunderstanding and fear, and you could do worse than this collection for a starting point.

Available now on World Music Network

RGNET1121CD