Best, Live & Unplugged at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town

One of South Africa's biggest musical exports, singer/songwriter Johnny Clegg returns with this career-spanning effort. Culled from a four-night run in 2013, the music here is stripped down and based around acoustic guitars, with the usual underpinnings of Zulu rhythms. Long a champion of many causes and one of the first South African artists to publicly lead a mixed-race band, Clegg sends crystal-clear messages on such songs as “Your Time Will Come,” “Scatterlings of Africa,” and the accordion-driven “Journey’s Island (Emalonjeni).” Other songs like “Impi” (which means “Zulu warriors” or “war”) and the reggae-tinged “Asimbonanga” (a song about Nelson Mandela and other political heroes) are probably more for his many fans at home, but they're still quite compelling on their own. Clegg’s songbook is so deep that he has various greatest-hits and live albums, but this puts a fresh spin on many of his fans’ favorites, making it a worthwhile addition to his catalog.