Boots Aquaria (Columbia)

This lighthearted soul LP, recorded in 1979 and reissued this month by the Numero Group, is a fortuitous by-product of a broken system. Edge of Daybreak formed in 1976 at the Powhatan Correctional Center in Virginia, which imprisoned a slew of talented African-­American musicians but allowed at least some of them access to instruments. As Numero’s Jonathan Kirby explains in the re­­issue’s liner notes, some members of the band had been locked up under dubious circumstances. Drummer and lead singer Jamal Jaha Nubi, for example, who’d already served time briefly in high school, was incarcerated again after retrieving his missing car in 1975—unbeknownst to him, in the interim it had been involved in a robbery, and he ended up on the hook. None of the players knew one another before Powhatan, and prison life is hardly stable—it’s a wonder that they were able to keep Edge of Daybreak together long enough to make an album. Its alternately tender and danceable songs, recorded in a single five-hour session, glow with a life-affirming vigor that must’ve helped these musicians survive their days shut up in cells. —Leor Galil

HorrendousAnareta (Dark Descent)

One of the strongest Mande voices in Mali fell silent in 2004 when Kandia Kouyaté, a popular and authoritative jelimuso (female griot), suffered a stroke. She vanished from the stage and the studio, and she could barely speak. In 2011, after a painstaking convalescence, she received a visit at her home in Bamako from influential Senegalese producer Ibrahima Sylla (the man behind behemoth West African imprint Syllart), who persuaded her to make what would become Renascence—her first new album in 13 years. Kouyaté completed the sessions in fits and starts, and the whole project might have stalled when Sylla died in December 2013, but his daughter Binetou saw it through. Kouyaté’s voiced has deepened and darkened over the years, and though the material and production are standard-­issue (the occasional dated synthesizer tone doesn’t help), the singer’s power and rhythmic sophistication remain undiminished. The material includes traditional praise songs, celebrations of events (the 50th anniversary of Mali’s independence, the birth of a child), and a reflective look at her own illness on the humbling “Sadjougoulé.” —Peter Margasak

Severe by MY DISCO