AfroCubism, which was released in North America on Nonesuch yesterday, will be featured on today's edition of PRI's The World. The show can be heard on some 200 stations across the United States, including WNYC AM 820 in New York City, where it airs at 3 PM ET; listen in live online at wnyc.org. Nick Gold, the head of World Circuit Records and the album's producer, will speak with The World's senior producer Marco Werman about the project, some 14 years after this collaboration of Cuban and Malian musicians was meant to take place.

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The album, which Gold had planned to record in Havana in 1996 when the Buena Vista Social Club was born, was finally recorded all these years later and is now the subject of two articles in the Village Voice: an album review and a preview of next Tuesday's live performance from AfroCubism at The Town Hall in New York, one of only three scheduled tour dates in North America. In the latter, music writer Richard Gehr sums the album as "a spacious sizzler, full of languid downhill riffs, gracefully rustic soloing, and Cuban-country charisma." For more tour information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

The Voice's Tad Hendrickson, in his review of the album, says it's not what one might expect when one thinks of "Afro-Cuban" music. "The big brass riffing and conga drums are supplanted by an earthier, string-based tradition, the similar-sounding guitar, ngoni, and kora shimmering together with the same subtlety that made BVSC so alluring," he writes, "inviting Yoruban spirits to the campfire rather than trying to chase them away with the blast of a horn."

Of the album's second track, "Al vaivén de mi carreta," which can be heard in full on Nonesuch Radio, Hendrickson says: "Something magical happens on one of the last choruses, with keening African voices perfectly rising up together with the incantatory Cubans." Together with the succeeding track, "Karamo," from Mali, he writes, these songs "are about as perfect a blend of AfroCubism's two dominant cultures as you'll ever find; the rest of the album sustains that high."

Hendrickson concludes of the album: "At long last, Gold and his cohorts have achieved something that lives up to its original promise, a direct link between the Old World and the new."

Read the complete review at villagevoice.com.

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All Music reviewer James Allen also notes that "the AfroCubism ensemble puts a whole new slant on the 'Afro-Cuban' tag, making for a true musical meeting of minds between the two cultures."

And while its story may be tied to the original Buena Vista sessions, "AfroCubism shouldn't be viewed as some sort of alternative-universe version of Buena Vista Social Club—it has its own very singular sonic identity," Allen insists. "The most immediately striking element is the way the tumbling riffs of the Malians ... seem to fall so naturally into the percolating Cuban polyrhythms ... There's a lot of listening going on in both camps, and an obvious musical empathy between them."

Read the complete review at allmusic.com.

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Head to the Nonesuch Store to pick up a copy of AfroCubism with high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s included at checkout, along with the exclusive bonus track "Keme Bourama." To watch live performances and behind-the-scenes studio footage of the band, visit nonesuch.com/media. Click here to listen to Nonesuch Radio.