Ethiopia’s music is a deep ocean, full of as many different types of folk, religious, classical and pop music as you can think of, representing more than 80 culture groups. There’s so much beautiful, intriguing and special Ethiopian music to hear… but over the past 25 years, there’s one particular style that has become a global phenomenon: Ethiojazz.
In the mid-1960s, a new musical scene was bubbling up in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. After working in state-owned institutional bands during the day, musicians would take their instruments to the nightclubs and bars and play what people really wanted to hear. This was a style that mixed soul, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and jazz with something unmistakably Ethiopian: it was all based on the qeñet, a system of five-note scales from Ethiopia’s highlands, where each scale has its own personality and emotion. With unique inflections influenced by traditional instruments, melodies using the qeñet have an indefinable Ethiopianness that makes them immediately recognisable.
And so the city grooved to this new pop, full of funky horns, solid rhythms, Amharic lyrics and a distinctive urban-folk tinge. It was fresh, exciting and – importantly – Ethiopian. This was Swinging Addis.
To read the rest of this potted history, head over to the original article at the Selamta website.
Photo: Walias Band.
