A Brief History of Ethiojazz for the Musically Curious

First published by Selamta, the Ethiopian Airlines online magazine.



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.

From the Horse's Mouth: Postcard from Antrobus, Cheshire

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.



Outside the front entrance of a village pub in mid-Cheshire, an autumnal drizzle just about starting, a motley gang has assembled with all manner of strange costumes and disguises. An ambassador has already run ahead to warn the bar staff and order in a round. Then, as one, the group opens their mouths and start singing: “Here come one, two, three jolly good hearty lads, and we’re all in one mind / For this night we come a-souling, good nature to find / for this night we come a-souling as it does appear / and it’s all that we are souling for is your ale and strong beer.” Inside, some unsuspecting patrons look around quizzically, wondering what the fuss is about. Once the singing has finished, there is a loud knock on the front door and all hell breaks loose.

This is a typical visit of the Antrobus Soul-Cakers, who come together every year to continue mid-Cheshire’s most iconic folk tradition. Soul-Caking is a real hodgepodge of a custom – part-play, part-visitation, part-fertility ritual of unknown ancient origin – performed on October 31 (and for a couple of weeks afterwards) at pubs throughout the region, usually four per night. Once, every village had its own Soul-Caking gang, but nowadays Antrobus is the only one with an unbroken lineage stretching back centuries.

Officially, I’m here to record the performances for the British Library sound archive, adding to the recordings of the same group from the 1950s and 1970s. We met up at the gang’s base at the Antrobus Arms to chat and listen to the old recordings, and then it’s off to delight the patrons of pubs in nearby Stretton, Rudheath, Davenham and Moulton with my recording equipment in tow. But I’m actually here for a more personal reason.

I’m from Cheshire – I grew up in a village only four miles away from Antrobus – yet I’d never even heard of Soul-Caking until after I’d left home, moved to the city and gained a belated interest in folk music and traditions in earnest. That such an important, old and well-known custom had existed just down the road from me without ever entering my consciousness left me in wonder, and with a tinge of shame. I’ve returned to finally witness a living part of my home culture for the first time.

So I find myself in a pub, surrounded by madness. The play is a whirlwind of sword-fights, madcap characters, shrieking, bellowing, poetry, jokes, braggadocio, heckling, light-hearted pint theft and a star turn by Dick the Horse, a real horse’s skull painted black, white and red, with a jaw that snaps at the command of its puppeteer hidden under a sackcloth body. After 20-or-so minutes, and with a final song and a quick drink afterwards, the gang are away to their next stop.



For the punters in the pub, it can all be a bit baffling. Some people know it’s happening and have come down especially. Others are completely bemused: pleasant family meals and girls’-nights-out are interrupted by the completely unexplained chaos. Some take it well, gazing with perplexed wonderment and getting into the spirit of things by the end; others ignore the weirdness with bored indifference, and a few – always men – seem to take its existence in their space as an insult or challenge and get a bit aggressive.

Each pub has its own distinctive atmosphere and audience, and a different performance because of it. Some pubs are electric, everyone gets into it and the Soul-Cakers adlib all over the place; in others, the crowd is dead and the play is rushed through as quickly as possible, with a bunch of material skipped and much grumbling from the players. Every performance is a new experience – it also helps that everyone becomes successively more lubricated as the night wears on. In true folk fashion, things stay the same while changing constantly.

I leave the last pub at gone midnight, knackered, tipsy and slightly stung by a few errant whips of a riding crop, but absolutely buzzing. My official duties are fulfilled, and my soul feels nourished too. Not only have I experienced an important part of my own cultural heritage for the very first time, but I’m back speaking in a broad Cheshire accent I hadn’t even noticed I’d lost. What an honour.

At the end of each play, to cheers from the pub-goers and a frying-pan passed around to collect for charity, the Antrobus Soul-Cakers strike up for a final verse: “And now our play is ended, and we can no longer stay / But with your kind permission we will come another day / But before we go, we’ll have you to know, we'll have you to understand / We’re a credit to old England, we’re the boys of the Antrobus gang!”


Photos: (top) The Antrobus Soul-Cakers in their natural habitat (the pub); (middle) Dick the Horse and his driver. Both photos by Nigel Farr.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru - Jerusalem

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru
Jerusalem
Mississippi Records (35 mins)

Tsege-Mariam Gebru is an emahoy (sister) of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, living a hermetic life in Jerusalem at 99 years old. She is also the originator of a singular style of piano music. This collection – a set of home tapes and tracks from a long-lost 1972 LP – is the first release of her recordings since Éthiopiques 21 in 2006.

The headliner of the album is the song ’Quand La Mer Furieuse’, which marks the first time that Tsege-Mariam’s singing has been heard on record. While this is a fascinating novelty, it is her solo piano compositions that remain the real showcase of her genius. The impressionisms of Debussy and Satie are obvious parallels; there are connections to Gurdjieffian spiritual pianism, Viennese waltzes and even ragtime. But all comparisons fall short – this music is simply incomparable. The best description is in broad strokes: emotional, simple with deep complexities, gentle with great power like lapping waves and tides. Her compositions cascade and flow through European classical, Orthodox church music and Ethiopian folk, while remaining apart from them all. They are captivating, breathtaking and often tear-inspiring – nowhere moreso than in the newly-recovered pieces ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Home of Beethoven’.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam is a living musical treasure, and these recordings are more precious artefacts in her unique trove.

Yalla Miku - Yalla Miku

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 187, May 2023.

Yalla Miku
Yalla Miku
Bongo Joe Records (32 mins)

Bongo Joe is a Geneva-based record label, music shop, café-bar, mission statement and musical philosophy. The new project Yalla Miku is what Bongo Joe would look like if it were also a seven-piece band. With members from Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco and Eritrea, this is the sound of multicultural Geneva.

Influences from rai, Gnawa, Tuareg music and Turkish psychedelia combine inside a cocoon of hip, energetic krautrock and synth pop; Red Sea scales are topped with Maghrebi beats; synths, distorted guitars and theremin conspire with digitally-altered krar, oud, gimbri, bendir and darbuka. Through a tangle of instruments, origins and moving parts, Yalla Miku create a transcontinental sound that coheres well, finding the commonalities in each style and remaining tight in their aims and arrangements.

It’s a successful debut. It absolutely explodes out of the gates with an opening track that demands dance (‘Premier du Matin’), and ends with a gloriously intense near-chaos (‘Suiise’). At its best it is exploratory, engaging and fun. It isn’t always at its best, but it’s usually not far off, and at the end I was sad there wasn’t more – always a good sign. Bongo Joe are a force for good in Geneva and in international music, and Yalla Miku are a great poster child.

Mze Shina - Elesa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 186, April 2023.

Mze Shina
Elesa
Buda Musique (50 mins)

A quintet of American, Peruvian, French and Iranian origin, based in Rennes, Brittany, is a pretty odd collective of musicians to perform Georgian music, but with more than 25 years of study behind them, Mze Shina’s songs are almost enough to transport the listener directly to the Caucasus Mountains.

Now on their fifth album, and their first since 2018’s Odoïa, the group continue their quest to explore the depths of Georgia’s polyphonic vocal tradition while adding their own modern, international twist. Although the group’s repertoire is traditional, their arrangements are innovative and exciting, and seem to emphasise global polyphonic traditions, with subtle harkings to Occitania, Bulgaria, Albania and more throughout.

The group’s four voices – three male and one female – are in a near-constant tumble, with voices cropping up in various combinations, harmonies and different styles of polyphony throughout – there’s even some impressive rapid-fire yodelling. With just voice and percussion, each intertwining vocal part rings clear within the weaving, and this album’s new addition of Milad Pasta’s Persian percussion (daf, zarb and riqq) provides more intriguing connections both east and west.

Mze Shina’s music is modern, traditional, global and inescapably Georgian – no matter where they call home.

Ebo Krdum - Revolt for Change

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 186, April 2023.

Ebo Krdum
Revolt for Change
Epidemic Sound (27 min)

After his 2021 Top of the World album Diversity, Ebo Krdum has followed up with two albums for the royalty-free music platform Epidemic Sound in 2022: Love and Struggle in May and the latest Revolt for Change in December.

Originally from the Darfur region in western Sudan, Krdum is now based in Sweden. He’s worked with many Swedish musicians in the past, but for this album he’s mostly on his own, singing and playing guitar, ngoni and fiddle among others, occasionally helped out by a bassist or percussionist. Although he describes his music as ‘Afroblues and Afrobeat,’ his sound is very much anchored in West Africa. The way he constructs his songs and shapes his guitar lines shows a clear lineage to the Songhai style of Ali Farka Touré, from whose records Krdum learnt guitar as a child. In fact, apart from the languages used – mostly Sudani Arabic, with some Darfuri Masara and Daju – there are places where this could easily be mistaken for the latest album by a Touré or Traoré from Mali.

This album doesn’t have the same scope as Diversity in terms of style, but Krdum gives solid performances throughout, along with impassioned lyrics on war, corruption and hope.

Hermon Mehari - Asmara

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 185, March 2023.

Hermon Mehari
Asmara
Kosmos (35 mins)

Jazz trumpeter Hermon Mehari is a Kansas City native based in Paris, but his third album is a reflection of his father’s land of Eritrea. Mehari has only visited the country once when he was five years old, but the memories of that time, and the music and culture of his childhood home, infuse this personal and touching work.

The overwhelming vibe of Asmara is one of freshness. It has something of a spring morning to it. Mehari’s trumpet has such an airy tone that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually a flugelhorn, and his ensemble specialises in beautifully light washes of sound without forfeiting any passion or musicality – piano and vibraphone player Peter Schlamb gives a particularly superlative performance.

The Eritrean influences can be felt throughout, but they’re subtle, like hazy memories conjured from a pentatonic passage within a flowing solo or a slightly staggered Red Sea rhythm guiding a composition. It’s only during the two guest turns by Eritrean singer Faytinga that those vapours coalesce into sweet raindrops of nostalgia. Don’t be mistaken, Asmara is a jazz record to its core, and a very solid one at that: a thoughtful exploration of roots and diaspora identity.