Radio 3 World Music Awards, Ocean, London

A night of musical magic

Tonight, BBC Radio 3 will broadcast Monday's concert at which the winners of their awards ran their ritual lap of honour. Well, all but one: the Moroccan-Egyptian Samira Said came on stage and made a short, quiet speech: "I am deeply saddened that the sound of guns is louder than my songs." For her to sing now, she said, would be entirely inappropriate, and she hoped the audience could forgive her if she didn't. The response from the packed auditorium was a huge round of applause.

I trust all this will be faithfully relayed by Radio 3 tonight, and that there is no emasculation of the kind that listeners are now getting from Radio 1, whose bosses have decreed that anything "unpalatable" – including, would you believe, a song about bandages – must be kept off the air.

Don't mention the war? You must be joking. Some are doing what they can to keep the world together, and in their modest way Radio 3's World Music Awards are lending an exemplary hand. Their immediate effect may be to make new stars and sell millions of records, but there's no better instant tonic for a depressed and impoverished land. Look at what Youssou N'Dour's fame has done for the music scene in Senegal: look at the way Senegal's Orchestra Baobab are giving a new boost to this process, on the back of their born-again album Specialist in All Styles. It was great to watch these lovable veterans bestow their genial benediction at the end of the proceedings.

Music may have been the evening's raison d'être, but it wasn't the main thing: this was the annual festival of a herbivorous tribe of world-music enthusiasts, who on this occasion were all sporting winking blue fairy lights, which made them look like a forest of fireflies. It did not matter that Los de Abajo – musical dissent from Mexico City's lower depths – were a mere sonic blur. They were here, jumping about and looking suitably mean, and they got their gong.

On the other hand, Swedish violinist Ellika Frissell and Senegalese kora-king Solo Cissokho created a winning fusion. There seems to be no end to the violin's adaptability, and here it made a charming foil for the kora's delicate tracery. No less piquant was the Gotan Project (their name is an anagram of "tango") who have grafted Jamaican dub on to this venerable Latin style. With their electronically treated voices, and their bandoneon's sharp rasp over a massively rumbling bass, the Buenos Aires spirit was undimmed.

Mozambique-born Mariza was next. She is the new queen of fado, with those characteristically half-strangled notes ratcheting up the music's intensity. Sometimes her stage performances are too calculated, but here she did the biz, holding us spellbound. But there was no way, in this crude acoustic, that we could appreciate the musical subtleties of Ensemble Kaboul, who kept Afghan music alive throughout the reign of the Taliban. They'll probably sound better on the radio tonight.

The BBC World Music Awards are on BBC Radio 3 tonight at 7.30pm