By now you have probably got used to the irregularities of the blog postings which reflect my personal interests in the different genres of Ethiopian music. Working on this blog gives me immense pleasure. I doubt that I would invest so much effort and care in collecting material for myself only. With you, my followers in mind, I aim to present the material concisely, clearly and informatively.
In the blog posts I have tried to cover, as far as possible, a wide and diverse selection that I have come across. I have been quite busy lately with my everyday commitments, so I have not had enough time to update the blog with new postings, and there are quite a few of those. Their time will come, if you are patient.
With this post I am starting a short series of rare and interesting singles released in Ethiopia during the 60s and 70s. It is very difficult to find information about the music of the time, which is why I would welcome your help. My job is made more difficult by the fact that I do not speak either Amharic, or any other of the Ethiopian languages. Therefore I apologise in advance for my frequent mistaken and sometimes plain incorrect, album titles.
In terms of the next dozen posts or so, I owe a debt of gratitude to my online friend Richard (*Richardpoespoes) from Holland. He obtained, digitalised and cleaned up the cracklings and noise from the records.
All the recordings have been transferred to the highest quality windows audio wave format [wav].
Enjoy and stay in touch.
I would particularly welcome the links for the albums and authors you have that you feel belong on this blog. Some of you have sent me brilliant rare albums and recordings , some of which I have shared, and some are yet to be shared.
My musical adventure is in its fourth year. I did not anticipate such a huge response and number of visits. I am happy that you like the posts and contact me with words of approval and support. I would not have lasted this long without your support.
Contact me and I would welcome your suggestions. Each one of your comments means a lot.
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Alemayehu Eshete - Alteleyeshignim [Live at Jazzamba]
ALEMAYEHU ESHETE: Addis Ababa Bete / Alteleyeshignim Amha AE 320 A Alemayehu Eshete: Addis Ababa Bete Arranged by Girma Beyene Accompanied by the All Star Band Produced by Amaha Eshete Reissued on 'éthiopiques-9: Alèmayèhu Eshèté 1969-1974', (Buda Musique, France) as "Addis Abèba bété".
Amha AE 320 B Alemayehu Eshete: Alteleyeshignim Arranged by Girma Beyene Accompanied by the All Star Band Produced by Amaha Eshete Reissued on 'éthiopiques-10: Ethiopian Blues & Ballads', (Buda Musique, France) as "Altèlèyèshegnem".
Year: 1971 Record pressed in India Note: Addis Ababa Bete is spelled 'Addis Abeba Bete' on the label.
Mulatu Astatke - New York-Addis-London [Full Album]
Ethio jazz. That's what Mulatu Astatke called his style of music when he invented it back in the 1960s, and it means exactly what it implies: Ethiopian melodies played on Western instruments with room for improvisation. Astatke was a pioneer for his country's modern music. His concept of instrumental music as an end in itself was a bit foreign in his homeland, where singers rule the popular music sphere, and he was among the very first musicians from Ethiopia to learn about music while abroad. He started playing as a teenager at school in Wales, and after a stint at London's Trinity School of Music, he jumped the Atlantic for a brief stay at Boston's Berklee College of Music, ultimately winding up in New York City in the mid-60s. There, he was exposed to sounds he simply couldn't have heard back home in Addis Ababa, and his exposure to jazz and Western harmonic concepts led him to formulate Ethio jazz, the perfect hybrid of the traditional and the modern.
His first attempts to forge his new genre occurred in the U.S., and his band members were mostly Puerto Rican. You can tell by listening, too. The several tracks here lifted from his two Afro Latin Soul LPs bear a strong stamp of boogaloo, Latin jazz, and other Americo-Caribbean forms. When he returned to Ethiopia, he arrived at a time when the country was opening up as never before, and Addis Ababa was as cosmopolitan as cities came, boiling with cultural restlessness that fed a vibrant nightlife. Recording resources were limited, but in 1969, Mulatu began cutting tracks for Amha Eshèté's Amha, the first independent label ever established in the country. He worked primarily as an arranger, but frequently wrote and recorded instrumentals to serve as B-sides for vocal songs, some of which are being issued here for the first time outside Ethiopia.
Astatke brought a unique skill set back to Addis with him, where he was able to employ musicians who'd grown up with the music he was so consciously modernizing. The resulting music is simply brilliant, fresh even decades later. The way Mulatu harmonized horns, combining pentatonic Ethiopian melody with Western chord concepts, sounds like no one else-- the music seems both ancient and modern at once, befitting the mixture of raw ingredients. This compilation is utterly intoxicating from the first note to the last-- preternaturally funky, haunting, complex, memorable, exciting, and unique, Ethio jazz easily transcends the era in which it was made.
"Mulatu", from his 1972 LP Mulatu of Ethiopia, recorded in New York with members of Mongo Santamaria's band during a visit to the States, is a brilliant signature track, a darkly funky tune with a hint of Caribbean shuffle, snaking sax solos, Mulatu's own cloudy vibraphone, and a bit of wah-pedaled Wurlitzer. The stately, smoky "Netsanet" is drawn from 1974's Yekatit: Ethio Jazz LP, the very first Ethiopian LP to be conceived as an album in advance (as opposed to a collection of 45 sides). Like the other songs from that album, it has a weighty solemnity to it that betrays the difficult revolutionary period during which it was recorded. My favorite Mulatu track, "Ené Alantchie Alnorem", was previously featured on Buda Musique's Ethiopiques Volume 4 compilation, and it still kills here. It is a song without a solid core: its fluttering electric piano, flute, and drums spin in an ethereal wash, held together by wind sound effects and a heavy sonority, and the descending piano line that outlines the chords feels like it's falling and catching itself on each beat.
A handful of vocal tracks dot the compilation, and they're all outstanding as well. "Ebo Lala" features Seifu Yohannes putting on his best Bollywood-inspired show, huffing and puffing over a heavy Latin beat and blasting horn section. "Wubit", featuring Muluken Melesse, has a cool, funky crime jazz strut, a sick breakdown, and a quintessentially Ethiopian melismatic vocal-- that this song has remained hidden from all but a few collectors in Ethiopia until now is almost criminal. Even Mulatu's very first foray into recording, the Latin-tinged instrumental "Shagu", bears his unmistakable signature, playing its cycling piano riff two octaves lower than in most Latin music and featuring a dark, mysterious vibraphone lead playing between Ethiopian pentatonics and modal concepts nicked from post-bop jazz.
Mulatu Astatke - Yefikir Tizita
Ethio jazz was never a commercial success in Ethiopia. That Ahma and Philips Ethiopia even saw fit to release any of it is a credit to their commitment to art over commerce, and even today it remains little-heard in its homeland. But Mulatu was a master craftsman and one of the most supremely inventive composers of a time when an awful lot of creative music was being made around the world. He's still going today, guesting on radio shows and teaching in Addis, and he released a great album with London's the Heliocentrics as his backing band earlier this year. But even if he'd disappeared after 1975, his legacy would be sealed.
Mississippi records continues their tradition of re-releasing obscure and out of print music from all around the world, this time tackling legendary Ethiopian singerMahmoud Ahmed.
Apparently this album of blistering african pop had never been reissued since it's original pressing, so I'm quite thankful that Mississippi did the legwork and got this back out into the ears of everyone.
Mahmoud Ahmed is the greatest Ethiopian singer of all time. His recordings with the Ibex Band are proper sweet, even awesome. This album, first released in 1978, is a world music classic. Album has been remastered quite brilliantly by Tim Stollenwerk.
Recorded at the end of the 'golden age' of Ethiopian urban music, Mahmoud is in top form belting out transcendent intense vocals over the Ibex Bands' hypnotic soulful horns, organs, guitars, bass & percussion. As good as it gets & as close to universally perfect music as ever has been made.
1. Mahmoud Ahmed - Bemin Sebeb Litlash / (4:30) 2. Mahmoud Ahmed - Anwedim Tekatin / (5:21) 3. Mahmoud Ahmed - Gebtewat Yihon Fikrien (5:46) 4. Mahmoud Ahmed - Jeguol Naw Betwa (3:34) 5. Mahmoud Ahmed - Endet Lilakek (4:16) 6. Mahmoud Ahmed - Neshtie / (5:16) 7. Mahmoud Ahmed - Fetsum Dink Lij Nesh / (4:41) 8. Mahmoud Ahmed - Hoy Na-Na Jegnaw Na / (4:40) 9. Mahmoud Ahmed - Marie Gela / (4:37)
Feedel Band is a Washington DC based Ethio-Jazz Band and has been performing as a self contained unit, as well as supporting Ethiopian artists like Tilahun Gessesse, (The king of Ethiopian pop music), very recently with Aster Aweke (The queen of Ethiopian soul music) on her current “Ewedihalehu” or "I love you" US tour.
Feedel band’s is founded in 2010 by Araya Woldemichael, and weeks later, his current band members joined him and together they have formed the first native Ethiopian group in north America as an Ethio -jazz music-oriented band that starred Moges Habte on Sax, Alemseged Kebede on Electric bass, Araya Woldemichael on keyboards and Samson Juffar on drums. After Samson Juffar’s departure to Ethiopia, drummer and percussionist Mikias Abebayehu took Samson’s place. In addition to guitarist Kaleb Temesgen and drummer J, Trombonist Ben Hall and krarist Minale Bezu, the band found Its own and a very unique Ethio - jazz sound.
Feedel or (alphabet) are Ge’ez script and a unique Ethiopian characters that are entirely phonetic structured in seven columns. In other words, each character in the Geez Feedel system has seven sounds. Feedel are not only a dazzling of human creativity but also, in practical terms, a powerful medium for communication and social interaction. The power of Feedel resides in the characters ability to represent virtually every sound. The ancient Ethiopians, who invented Ethiopic writing system, were poised, it seems, to capture and harness all sounds in the universe.
Feedel Band - Belhame
Since 1997 the Éthiopiques series has made Ethiopian music a hipster obsession, exposing jazz heads and rockists to the jazzy funkiness that emanated from East Africa in the ’60s and ’70s. (Never heard of the collection? You may have heard songs from Volume 4—there are now 29 volumes in total—in Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers.)
Feedel’s sax player Moges who was born in Addis Ababa, and can be heard performing the funky James Brown Band-influenced cut “Muziqawi Silt” on Éthiopiques’ Volume 13 with his ’70s group The Walias Band. On the other hand Feedel's bass player Alemseged Kebede's great groovy bass lines can be found in Aster Aweke and Tilahune Gessesse's music. Feedel Band’s sound can best be described as a merging of ’60s R&B, funk and jazz with traditional Ethiopian songcraft.
Feedel Band - Araya's Mood
Feedel Band is taking Ethiopian music and Jazz, and blending it into a simmering stew of musical genre’s, textures and feeling. These boys have real feel – for their music, for their audience and for each other. Playing with maturity and passion is second nature to all of them ...
Feedel band has devoted much of a creative career spanning almost 20 years to this eternal, inspiring form - the very base and roots of Ethio-jazz.... gather inspiration from The Golden Age of Ethiopian popular music in the late 1960s and 70s— a time that had Addis Ababa littered with groups playing a brass-heavy concoctions influenced by American soul and jazz. So here they are, as enthusiastic as ever - Ethiopian's finest, most skilled practitioners in the art of the Ethiopian music. They take their newly created original pentatonic melodies and repurpose them with mutated instrumentation like 60s and 70s-era Ethiopian grooves: Congas, electric Guitar, Bass, Saxophone, traditional Krar, Masinko, Piano, Organ, Trombone and Drums.
What sets Feedel Band apart from other acts that play Ethio-Jazz style of music is that they commonly hybridize the regular Jazz style with Ethio-Jazz genres, or modernized the sound with out loosing its original traditional texture or feeling. The energy and power is overwhelming. They are creating and in some cases re-creating the musical language of what has been called Ethio -Jazz.
Since the bands inception, the reception that Feedel has received has been extraordinary. At FestAfrica 2011, APAP showcase "Drom" New York City, World cafe live Philadelphia, Global roots festival Minneapolis, MN and most recently at The Kennedy Center in 2014 and the audience was enamored with their warm and engaging style. While their music is inspired by the Golden Age of Ethiopian popular music, but Feedel Band always perform their own original music.
Their newly released CD is called “Ethiopian Ocean”
