DEBO BAND
FLAMINgoh (Pink Bird Dawn)
Readers sometimes ask me why I don't have a bigger Ethiopian section on here. I figure if you are into Ethiopian music you can buy all 500 volumes of Buda's Ethiopiques series and you will be happy. To me the sound is a bit too unworldly. I like some of the jazzier stuff, and even the odd funk or pop track, but the vocals, for the most part, are too much for me. Boston-based Debo Band is not that alien: they are a retro band playing 70s and 80s style Ethiopian funk. The vocals do sound strained to my ears, but there's rock guitar and jazz horns to counterbalance it. This is a live recording and they are clearly into it. It's only a 4-song EP but is packed with energy.
ADDIS ACOUSTIC PROJECT
TEWESTA ("Remembrance") (World Village 468091)
The answer to my problem with Ethiopian music is here. The melodies of the 50s and 60s, familiar to us from that endless series of CDs on Buda are revived in a different context. Instead of cheesy Farfisa and electric guitar we find mandolin and accordion. There's acoustic bass, and instead of fat horn lines a single clarinet. The whole thing has been toned down and made mellow, so mellow it's almost in the 'easy listening' category, but it has a jazz bite to keep your attention. The band is made up of veterans of the Addis scene. Formed by the accordion player Girum Mezmer, he tried out different permutations until he had the sound he wanted and then they gigged in Addis for two years before recording this, their debut album. Consequently it's really polished. The repertoire is mostly love songs. There's the occasional guest: Sudanese oud player Mahmed Elmak appears on "Fikir ayarejim (Love is eternal)" and "Enigenagnalen (We shall meet again)," a folk song, features mandolin and clarinet. The music is authentic yet has been updated with a jazzy sensibility which makes it timeless.
ETHIOPIQUES 8
SWINGING ADDIS (CRC 829282-2)
Some people can't get too much of a good thing, which is why the Ethiopiques series has now reached close to a thousand volumes. For me a little goes a long way. I have one album, Ahmed Mahmoud's ERE MELE MELA, that I like, on vinyl. I had it before the Ethiopiques series came along. It too has been reissued as part of the series, number 7, with extra tracks which don't improve it: in fact I prefer the LP, without the alternate takes. This is strange music, R&B backed, sometimes Bollywood-flavoured, strangely familiar but certainly strange. To me it's a music of extremes: either there's soporific sax or stressful singing. I am not comfortable with the Ethiopian vocal style and whenever there's a familiar sound, like a guitar solo, it seems highly derivative. When people would bug Cheb i Sabbah to play a certain tune he would ask them if they had the album, when they said yes, he would tell them to rush home and listen to it! When pseudo-hipsters would call during my radio show to ask for Ethiopian music I would put on Jabba the Hutt's palace band from the Star Wars soundtrack. Check it out, a pure Ethiopique groove! (It was one of the few things in the station library I could play, everything else was planned and brought from home in a large post office mail tub.) But just to make you ETHIOPIQUES devotees happy I present one outstanding album from the series. Alèmayèhu Eshèté (included here with 6 selections) is one of the best exponents of this music. His largest debt is to Soul Brother Number One James Brown. But it's not your average afro-funk groove. There's army fanfare guys playing the big horn choruses, cheesy wheezy Farfisa organ, and above all that Amharic plaint. This album is a bunch of hits (we must presume) from 1969 to 1975, put out by AMHA Records, a small local label during the final days of Haile Selassie. Influences from Archie Dell and the Drells to Wilson Pickett are apparent in every song. During the rule of the tinpot demi-urge most music was restricted to the Army Band, the Police Band, or the band of the Imperial Body Guard. AMHA was able to record and issue music without going to the censorship committee because things were in such turmoil. But things got worse after Selassie was deposed and a military junta took over putting an end to the swinging sixties that had flourished briefly in Addis. If you want to dip into the ETHIOPIQUES series this is a good introduction to the funkier (& slightly more accessible) flavours.
DUB COLOSSUS
A TOWN CALLED ADDIS (RealWorld USCDRW155)
Dub Colossus is Nick Page, I don't know how big he is (the only other colossus I know is Rhodes which is reduced to submerged ankles), but dub he does. Page started out working with Steel Pulse before taking up bass and mixology himself. He was a founder of Trans-global Underground and a major part of their 6 albums, writing, performing and producing. Now he is indulging his passion for the Ethiopiques series of CDs on Buda Musique which document the sound of swinging Addis in the waning years of the reign of Haile Selassie before the oppressive military regime of Mengistu wiped music off the sand-encrusted map. For A Town Called Addis he found some of the old nightclub crooners and musicians still extant and added a 70s dub sensibility. Imagine playing the Mighty Diamonds in one channel and Alemayehu Eshete in the other, but ultimately that's as close at it comes. Saxophonist Feleke Hailu (a classical composer, lecturer and head of music at the Yared Music School) sounds a bit like Kenny G, maybe it's just the echo, but then the pianist Samuel Yirga also opts for space rather than sound. Teremag Weretow adds his plaintive voice; while his messenqo, a scrapey one-string fiddle, is the most interesting non-Western instrument here. The Dub takes away the exotic edge of Ethiopia but it still has a dreamlike quality as snatches of organ or flute float by. It's not earth-shaking and I don't know how much I will listen to it, but it's worth checking out.