The first proper album from legendary folk troubadour John Katokye, 'Obuhangwa bwa Banyankore na Bahororo' introduces the mesmerising improvised vocal music of the Banyankore and Bahororo peoples to those of us outside of Uganda.

Katokye is one of the most popular folk singers in Western Uganda, and that fame didn't come easily. Fascinated by the sounds he heard around him in rural East Africa, he ran away from home when he was a child to absorb the region's canon of traditional songs, herding cattle and training his voice for decades, performing whenever and wherever he could. The style of singing is known as "ekyeshongoro" and is unique to the Banyankore and Bahororo peoples, Bantu-speaking pastoralists who have worked on the land in Uganda for centuries, primarily handling the native long-horned Ankole cattle. It's improvised poetry of a sort, inspired by the sights and sounds of the rural experience. A lead vocalist starts off with a short phrase, and then that's extended by one or more additional singers who create a continuous overlapped performance that can go on for 10 minutes without any additional instrumentation.

Katokye was invited to Villa Nyege to record this special album, engineered by Jonathan Uliel Saldnha and Dominic Clare (aka Declared Sound), and it's another opportunity to interface with music that's pretty far from the beaten track for most Western listeners. Opener 'Abera Bakyarusheshe' works as a soft introduction, setting Katokye's cyclical improvisations against an intermittent rhythmic click; different voices jump in and follow Katoyke's lead, but the most surprising moment comes when the pitch shifts, creating a hypnotising effect. 'Abanzira' is more complex, and the 60-year-old singer matches his low, doughy murmurs with ascending run-on phrases that pay tribute to the women of his Katokye clan.

On 'Okugamba Ente', Katokye's voice is a hoarse chatter, almost toneless as it bats back-and-forth between his collaborators and an almost inaudible woody thump. This one's a celebration of the cows' relationship with humans - his rapid-fire words are meditative praise poems, and that percussion sound is the herding staff. And on the long, hallucinatory centrepiece 'Ekyeshongoro Kyabakazi', Katokye balances his cyclic phrases with gentle, bellowing cadences that echo the cows' persistent calls. It's quite lovely, and nothing you've likely heard before.