Blogtrotters

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

[Yanna] Badume's Band & Aklilu Zewdie - [2005] - Live à Glomel [ethiopia+france]


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recorded live @ 17ème Rencontre Internationale de la Clarinette Populaire, Glomel, France, may 7, 2005.


       A musical meeting between Yanna Badume's Band and virtuoso clarinetist of Ethiopia Aklilu Zewdie (director of Yared School, National School of Music at the University of Addis Ababa). 

Aklilu Zewdie
     Want to find Poullaouen Glomel and the atmosphere of warm nights in Addis Ababa 70's, when fantastic crooners bewitched girls with languid melodies

Aklilu ZEWDIE : clarinette
Stéphane LE DRO : clarinette basse, saxophone
Antonin VOLSON : batterie
Rudy BLAS : guitare
Olivier GUENEGO : claviers
Stéphane RAMA : basse
Xavier PUSSET : saxophone
Julien BECHEN : saxophone
Eric MENNETEAU : chant

12 tracks, excellent sound, great performance ... Enjoy !!!

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Kassa Tessema - Fano [1998] [ethiopia]



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01. Kassa Tessema - Fano (5:28)
02. Kassa Tessema - Bati (5:51)
03. Kassa Tessema - Shegitu (4:24)
04. Kassa Tessema - Satenaw (2:19)
05. Kassa Tessema - Ambasel (6:14)
06. Kassa Tessema - Gelele (5:48)
07. Kassa Tessema - Tizita (10:53)
08. Kassa Tessema - Bertukane (6:26)
09. Kassa Tessema - Nagedamu (5:42)
10. Kassa Tessema - Ebakeh Tarekegn (3:06)
11. Kassa Tessema - Musica (4:50)






                                            Ethiopian legend - Kassa Tessema






Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Mulatu Astatke & his Ethiopian Quintet - Afro Latin Soul 1 & 2 [1966]




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              Mulatu Astatke & his Ethiopian Quintet: Afro-Latin Soul Vol. 1;
                                 Worthy NOW-1014; 1966 (Latin jazz) 

              Mulatu Astatke & his Ethiopian Quintet: Afro-Latin Soul Vol. 2; 

                                 Worthy NOW-1015; 1966 (Latin jazz) 














              Wild! Pulsating! This afro-latin jazz album of Mulatu and His Quintet is an unique and exciting mixture of three cultures: Ethiopian, Puerto Rican and American! 
                      During the session, featuring Felix Torres and John Perez on percussions, Mulatu masterfully jumps from vibes to piano to drums. This album is one you will always treasure! 







Ethiopian sounds with a twist
By Bill Beuttler, Globe Correspondent 
November 5, 2004


It's been decades since Mulatu Astatke has performed his so-called Ethio Jazz in the United States, back when he toured and recorded in the 1960s with his Ethiopian Quintet. But the arranger-composer will be doing so again Wednesday in Arlington at the Regent Theatre, in the first of three concerts with the Either/Orchestra.

A fusion of the traditional music of Mulatu's native Ethiopia and the jazz and Latin influences he picked up as a student in London and Boston in the late 1950s and early '60s, Ethio Jazz enjoyed its short, largely unnoticed heyday between Mulatu's return to Ethiopia from New York in 1968 and the rise of the Marxist dictatorship there in 1974, after which the recording industry in that country remained shuttered for years.

By then, Mulatu had become a major figure in Ethiopian music. He had done so by bringing home and introducing such Western instruments as a Hammond organ, vibes, congas, and timbales, and, more important, by adapting to traditional Ethiopian melodies the composing and arranging skills he had studied under Herb Pomeroy and others during a short stretch at the Berklee College of Music.

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and others were experimenting with modal jazz at the time Mulatu was studying jazz, and that and other influences shaped his Ethio Jazz.

''I still listen a lot to Gil Evans," says Mulatu by phone from his son's home in northern Virginia, recalling the musicians who affected him most in those seminal years. ''I love George Shearing very much -- I like his changes, I like his approach to his 12-tone music. I was listening a lot to Randy Weston. Coltrane I was listening to a lot. And Miles. Those are the people who really influenced me."

Mulatu's main challenge in combining traditional Ethiopian music with jazz, he says, involved integrating the pentatonic-scale-based melodies of Ethiopia with the 12 tones on which Western music is based. The result, to Western ears, has an eerie, exotic, almost trancelike feel to it, coupled with more familiar jazz, Latin, and soul rhythms and harmonies.

''Whatever you do," Mulatu says, ''if you touch the melody, then the whole thing's going to be changed. So the only thing you have to do to make this music interesting is to really work on the harmonic side of it. So I really worked on what I studied -- nice arrangements and nice voicings and nice soloing."

Mulatu's recorded output has, of course, been sparse. Still, it was recordings that serendipitously brought him together with the Either/Orchestra this past January, when the E/O capped off a two-week tour of the country by becoming the first non-Ethiopian band to perform at the annual Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa. 

Russ Gershon, Either/Orchestra's leader, became smitten with Ethiopian music after acquiring several CDs from the French producer Francis Falceto's ''Ethiopiques" series, which included Mulatu work from the early '70s.

Gershon went on to include arrangements of Ethiopian tunes on the E/O CDs ''More Beautiful Than Death" and ''Afro-Cubism." Those got noticed by Falceto and led to an E/O appearance in Addis Ababa. (The E/O's live festival performances with various Ethiopian musicians, including Mulatu, will make up volume 21 or 22 of the ''Ethiopiques" series, says Gershon, and probably be released this spring.)

''There's not that long tradition of high-level jazz playing that they're coming out of," Gershon says of the Ethiopian instrumentalists he heard on disc, ''so there's a sort of simplicity to the playing that I really like. . . . It's sort of all vibe, all feeling, coming through relatively simple technique."

For his part, Mulatu, whose main performing instruments are vibraphone, piano, and percussion, is delighted after all these years to work with American musicians who combine high-caliber chops and a genuine affinity for his music.

''They feel this music," he says, ''and they really play it so nice."










01 - i faram gami i faram (2:19)
02 - mascaram setaba (1:49)
03 - shagu (3:05)
04 - one for buzayhew (4:30)
05 - alone in the crowd (3:55)
06 - almaz (2:53)
07 - mulatu's hideaway (2:55)
09 - a kiss before dawn (3:10)
10 - playboy cha cha (3:56)
11 - the panther (boogaloo) (2:33)
12 - konjit (pretty) (3:16)
13 - soul power (5:16)
14 - lover's mambo (2:15)
15 - love mood for two (4:28)
16 - jijiger (2:29)
17 - girl from addis abada (3:57)
18 - karayu (4:02)
                                                  19 - raina (4:46)

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Clashing Egos feat. Minyeshu Kifle - Aminjig Nebere [I Trusted You] [2004]


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        Minyeshu Kifle Tedla was born in the city of Dire Dawa in the east of Ethiopia. During her childhood she moved to Addis Ababa and at the age of 17 she joined the leading ‘National Theatre’ of Ethiopia. Here she developed her artistic multi talents as a singer, dancer, producer and choreographer. With the crème de la crème of the Ethiopian music scene she toured the world around - within 4 month over more than 35 countries - and performed at the greatest Ethiopian music and dance production ever: ‘People to People’. 




     She joined the stage with famous Ethiopian musical icons such as Mulatu Astatke and singers Mahmoud Ahmed, Tilahun Gessesse, Bizunesh Bekele and many more. To widespread her wings as an artistic multi talent she performed in Ethiopian cinema as well, playing a leading role as an actress in the movie ‘Senait’



   
       Clashing Egos  successfully blend the sound of Mo' Wax-like trip hop grooves and exotic sounds with the voices of Darryll-Ann frontman Jelle Paulusma, British singer Kirsty Hawkshaw and Ethiopian vocalist Minyeshu Kifle. 



       Especially the latter does an impressive performance on the melancholic Afro tune 'Aminjig Nebere (I Trusted You)'. The album reveals itself as a steady grower, so don't trust your initial judgment and certainly use a headset when listening to it because it's truly a sound experrience. "We wanted to make a beautiful album’. It’s much more than just that, it's electronic soulmusic for the 21st century.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Zeleke Tsegaye - Music from Ethiopia [2000]


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    Awesome !   

01 - Bal Aggbach Alu
02 - Hod Yifgew
03 - Yezen Baba Mar Wolela
04 - Man Neber Endesew
05 - Yewoyen Abeba
06 - Akale Neyie
07 - Nech Chereca
08 - Mod Yifgew

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Mulatu Astatke & Either/Orchestra - Live at Moers festival 2008



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       Mulatu Astatke is one of Ethiopia's major musicians. In the late 1950s, he travelled to London, and later Boston and New York, absorbing jazz and Latin music, recording several LPs (one of which, Mulatu of Ethiopia, has become a legend among DJs in recent years), and eventually bringing both modern jazz and Latin influences and specific instruments back home to Addis Ababa. On piano, organ, vibes and percussion, with his arrangements and compositions, and as an agent provocateur, he became a pivotal figure in a great era of Ethiopian pop and jazz, from 1968 to 1974. To this day, he remains a ubiquitous presence in the Ethiopian music scene, as club owner, music school founder, radio DJ, composer, arranger and instrumentalist.




       The Either/Orchestra is among the longest running and most important large ensembles in jazz. Since 1985, under the direction of founding saxophonist/composer Russ Gershon, the ten-piece group has traversed the history and stylistic range of jazz to make great music out of unexpected connections between styles and approaches to music. Like the late Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the E/O has been a kind of graduate school of jazz, whose alumni include John Medeski, Matt Wilson, Josh Roseman and Miguel Zenon, among dozens of other significant players. 




      In 1997, inspired by the work of Mulatu Astatke among others, the E/O began playing their own arrangements of Ethiopian popular music, which garnered them an appearance at the Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa in January 2004, the first Americans ever invited. In Addis, the group met Mulatu and invited him to play on their concert, with results that surprised and delighted the audience and critics. Since that time, the E/O and Mulatu have performed together in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Canada and the US.



1. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - I [Soul song]     (10:29)
2. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - talk               (0:57)
3. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - II [Yekermo   Sew/Gubelye/YegelleTezeta ]   (20:14)
4. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - talk               (0:50)
5. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - III [Yekatit]  (8:32)
6. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - IV [I Faram Gami I Faram]       (7:05)
7. Either Orchestra & Mulatu Astatke - V [Yezamed Yebaed] (2:00)