MUSIC: THE BEST MUSIC OF 1996

1 CASSANDRA WILSON NEW MOON DAUGHTER (Blue Note). With her knowing, nocturnal voice, Wilson is the queen of contemporary jazz vocalists and the true heir of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. Here she branches out, with remakes of songs by the likes of U2, Hank Williams, even the Monkees. She graces all of them–covers as well as spellbinding originals–with a classy Afrocentricity that shatters boundaries even as it breaks your heart.

2 Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Bernard Herrmann: the Film Scores (Sony Classical). Remember the shower in Psycho? Hitchcock may have been the director, but it was the gruff, bluff composer Herrmann who brought the scene to vivid, shrieking life. Salonen eloquently states the case for this and seven more of Herrmann’s best scores.

3 The Fugees The Score (Ruffhouse/Columbia). Tough but tuneful, ready to entertain but unwilling to compromise, this Haitian-American rap trio proved that positive, semipolitical hip-hop could outsell gangsta rap–and alternative rock too. Drawing from reggae and soul, the Fugees created a fresh bicultural sound as bright as the Caribbean and as blunt as New Jersey.

4 Patty Loveless The Trouble with the Truth (Epic). The title may imply some kind of emotional hesitancy, but this hardscrabble country diva has no trouble whatsoever singing about betrayal, abuse, loneliness–and the against-all-odds will to survive. Her versions of nifty dirges by Gary Nicholson, Richard Thompson and Matraca Berg are less interpretations than rites of down-home exorcism.

5 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook Night Song (Real World/Caroline). Khan, a huge star in his native Pakistan, is a singer of qawwali–Sufi religious music that, like gospel, seeks to bring listeners closer to God through ecstatic vocals and rhythms. Here, with Canadian producer-guitarist Michael Brook, Khan sings of earthly love; the spiraling, urgent songs are mostly in Urdu, but Khan’s passion and purpose need no translation.

6 Sublime Sublime (Gasoline Alley/MCA). A good-hearted street riot of punk rock, avant-garde hip-hop and ska (a faster, jerkier reggae precursor), Sublime’s music is hard to categorize and harder still to resist. The band is already defunct (the lead singer and songwriter, the puckishly gifted Brad Nowell, died of a heroin overdose in May), but no rock album this year sounds more alive.

7 Ani DiFranco Dilate (Righteous Babe Records). Tart, topical songs from this 25-year-old genre-bending singer-guitarist, who blends folk, punk, trip-hop and whatever else strikes her fancy into insurgent and often arrestingly beautiful music. DiFranco hitches these tunes to scathing lyrical and deeply personal takes on romance and gender issues, then releases her records through her own record company.

8 Marcus Roberts Time and Circumstance (Columbia). Since departing from Wynton Marsalis’ band in 1991, Roberts has established himself as the most cerebral of jazz soloists, with a taste for sensuous, rich chords and intricately patterned melodies that resound with jazz’s history yet push toward higher ground. Roberts polishes his work to a high gloss but never indulges in needless flash.

9 Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea The Mozart Sessions (Sony Classical). The classical-music industry is suffering from a dearth of star performers–so along comes McFerrin, famed for his otherworldly vocalese and infectious charm. He and jazz pianist Corea turn in original, joyous performances of the familiar A major and D minor piano concertos with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

10 Maxwell Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (Columbia). Soulful, seductive and as smooth as lingerie, this charismatic R. and B. theme album follows a single love affair from the eyes-meeting-across-a-crowded-club start all the way to the marriage-proposal endgame. Think Marvin Gaye. Think Smokey Robinson. Think classic soul that recalls the ’70s but knows all about the ’90s.