The 2017 Disney Pixar musical-fantasy Coco revolves around 12-year-old Miguel, an aspiring musician who is forced to contend with family secrets, betrayal, and a curse in pursuit of a life with music. Music plays an important role not only in the film's plot but in the telling of the story, with an official soundtrack that includes over 70 minutes of original music. Included are songs by Germaine Franco and Adrian Molina, an original score by Michael Giacchino (Up, Ratatouille, The Incredibles), and song centerpiece "Remember Me," written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Among the several singers featured on the recording are lead voice-actors Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, and Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel. "Remember Me" undergoes a handful of transformations on the soundtrack, including its introduction by Bratt as fictional Mexican singing star Ernesto de la Cruz, and a version by real-world pop stars Miguel and Natalia Lafourcade. Later in the track list, Giacchino's orchestral/folk score is steeped in Latin tradition, from mariachi to flamenco guitar and bolero.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

There are dozens of compilations of music by Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango, one of the great globetrotters in world music, who brought the sound of his trademark “Soul Makossa“ (that had little actual makossa in it) to Europe, the United States, Asia, and beyond. He has recorded with everyone from Sly & Robbie to Fela Kuti to Don Cherry. He has been recording since the 1960s, and criss-crossing the globe since 1972. That said, of all the compilations out there, this one is unique. First of all, its 17 tracks are all previously unreleased. Secondly, recorded in both France and in New York, the music contained herein was written and recorded for soundtracks and library recordings; meaning, of course, that apart from cinema, this music appeared in television programs and in commercial radio and television advertising. The list of musicians and complete discographical information is unavailable, but the French Fremaux & Associes imprint that compiled these sides has done an admirable job of getting Dibango to go into his memory banks and offer at least partial details. All of these tracks were cut between 1971 and 1975. The French recordings were easier because they contained players from his Parisian band: Jacques Bolognesi, Ivan Julien, François Jeanneau, and Slim Pezinhere. The sides recorded in New York contained guest musicians that were all jazz superstars, including drummer Tony Williams, bassist Buster Williams, and pianist Cedar Walton. Not surprisingly, the sounds here are of a wide variety, they are not only appealing, but stellar. The styles range from the Afro-beat sounds in “Lagos Go Slow,” to the funky, African jazz of “Da Bush a Bush,” to the Gato Barbieri-influenced Afro-Cuban jazz funk in “Blowin’ Western Mind,” to straight-up exotica funk on “Aphrodite Shake.” This set offers the many sides of one of Africa’s and the world’s most diverse musicians at his very best. Anyone who’s ever been interested in Dibango’s music will want this set. There are liners by Benjamin Goldstein, Jacques Denis, and Patrick Fremaux, and though they hold less actual historical information than the music fanatic would necessarily desire, they are aesthetically and culturally informative. In true label fashion, this set is attractively packaged and competitively priced.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

They'd been calling him "El Rey" for years, but Tito Puente really proved it on this, one of his best original LPs on Tico. Yes, this is the one with "Oye Como Va," one of the brightest, most exuberant Latin performances of the century, but El Rey Bravo has plenty of other features for Puente's tight pachanga orchestra. "Tokyo de Noche" has great ensemble playing, as well as nice features for flute and violin, while "Tombola" (recorded the same year by the Puerto Rican All Stars) is a nice ballroom tune.© John Bush /TiVo

Sweetness rules on Colbie Caillat's debut, Coco, which is perhaps only appropriate for an album bearing that name. The record doesn't play like a toasty mug of chocolate on a winter's day, though; it's a sugary lemonade on a breezy summer afternoon. It's light and comforting, a familiar blend of sunny pop and singer/songwriter tropes that flirt with cliché but never sound hackneyed -- a lighter, brighter spin on Norah Jones that sounds like an ideal soundtrack to a few hours in a cozy coffeehouse or a montage on Grey's Anatomy, whatever comes first. If that gives the impression that Caillat is a little calculated -- and if her music-biz heritage (her dad co-produced Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Tusk) gives the sense that she may have had a silver spoon, and if her celebrated MySpace popularity is also initially suspect -- then as an album Coco shows no crassness or coldness: it flows easily and, yes, sweetly, filled with gently ingratiating melodies and delivered with warmth and a casual charisma that proves to be quite endearing by the end of the record. Caillat doesn't attempt anything approaching a major statement -- the album is filled with songs about love and life -- but that's her appeal: she sings about simple, everyday things in an unassuming manner, letting her melodies and girl-next-door charm carry the day, and they do so winningly on this nicely mellow debut.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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An absolute hero of Brazilian music since the late 1960s, Caetano Veloso has always sung with the fragility of a fallen angel. A form of bittersweet anxiety, of ghostly melancholy, against the grain of the sunny clichés and sugar-coated popular beliefs surrounding Brazilian music. Caetano Veloso's music becomes even more indispensable when his ever-restless voice combines together with an anxiety-inducing period. In Bolsonaro's Brazil and in the midst of lockdown, he created this album of the highest quality, composed solo in his studio in Rio de Janeiro, then recorded with musicians remotely or with a health pass, as Covid permitted. This record is delightful, as complex as it is clear. Maestro Veloso doesn't invent anything, but his songs are incomparably accurate, both in emotion and interpretation. Some have a few guitar chords and others symphonic layers; they all move to a little samba tempo. Each one is a small world, which evokes Brazil and its African or European roots, like on the magnificent fado Você-você, a duet with the Portuguese singer Carminho. There is more than forty years between them, but this song seems to have waited for the singer’s twilight years to emerge as a gift to the singer. Autoacalanto, with his son playing the acoustic guitar, is also to be enjoyed. Veloso was inspired by the babbling of his grandson. This charming family nursery rhyme is like the whole album: a precious gift, the most effective vaccine against the perils of the time. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

In the mid-'70s, Vannelli automatically got to the forefront of R&B due to his soulful vocals and the melodic musical arrangements. The only problem with work of Vannelli is that it often veered from the ridiculous to the sublime with absolutely no middle ground. On the bright side, whenever his lyrics hit the right note they were matched by his near-operatic vocals. 1975's Storm at Sunup, his third A&M effort, offers a lot of instances on the yin and yang. The atmospheric "Love Me Now" perfectly captures Vannelli as one of the more wishy-washy and self-absorbed singers as he croons "take me as I am/the storm in your life." The album's best song, "Keep on Walking" beautifully captures a sense of bleak romanticism as Vannelli turns in a mesmerizing vocal. The ARP heavy sound that typified his early work shows up on "Love Is a Night," and it has some tricky chord changes as he recounts his conquests. The clumsy lyrics of "Mama Coco" and "Gettin' High" are so bad they are nearly embarrassments. While those songs are odd, the best of Storm at Sunup certainly captures Vannelli's classic mid-'70s sound.© Jason Elias /TiVo