Press and Reviews

 "some of the most blistering big band funk, soul and jazz work outs" (Mojo)
 "Is there any music more alluring (...) more down right sexy?" (HMV)
 "astonishing music" (Music Week)
 "This double CD is a revelation" (Independent)
 "Thrilling, loopy, intriguing, an emotional cauldron" (Froots)
 "A rich and enjoyable box of musical delights" (Wire)
 "almost every track is thrillingly addictive" (UnCut)
 "The essential introduction to Ethiopian music" (Songlines)

 Haile's got a brand new bag 
 (The Guardian 10 august 2007)

 
 "some of the most blistering big band funk, soul and jazz work outs"

SO, WHAT did the Ethiopians ever do for us? Well Haile Sellassie/Jah Rastafari, obviously. And, for better or worse, Live Aid and Band Aid. And for a period until 1978, , when Addis was as hot as muscle shoals. Kudos, then, to Amha Eshèté, who set up the first independent record company in the country and kick started this story. Like hippy entrepreneurs in the summer of ’68, Eshèté  was in his mid 20’s and determined to take on The Man: in his case a heavy handed censor who was anything but rigorous when it came to music. Between 1969 and ’75 Amha records released 103 singles, and alongside them came a whole industry and a short lived scene that only died under the long curfew of Mengistu’s Derg regime.

Kudos, too, to Francis Falceto, who spent ten years trying to put out a compilation of Ahma’s hits, before beginning the Ethiopiques series (volume twentysomething coming soon). Such a catalogue is daunting: a time dominated by afro’s and miniskirts, funk and flares, but there was quiet satie-esque jazz, traditional music so old it could have been played on King David’s harp. Wading into the series of unprepared tempts disappointment. Indeed, it’s the wealth of unheralded soul and its sequencing that costs this long-awaited initiate-friendly 28 track sampler a star. Like a DJ it begins tentatively as if warming us up for the main course. Three of the first six tracks are by jazz pioneer Mutalu Astatqé – they’re intriguing tunes of unresolved tension, but they feel more like obstacles than entrées. When you hit Mahmoud Ahmed, you know you’ve struck gold. With his extraordinary vibrato, he sounds like Lennon through a Leslie speaker (cf Tomorrow Never Knows). While singing the backwards coda to Rain.

The key to the Ethiopian sound though, comes not from the throat, but from the bands finely drilled musicians, who were, as with many of Jamaica’s heroes, schooled in brass bands. To keep the government happy, they mixed their military backgrounds with traditional music and this new sound. Once you’ve cracked the regimentation they imposed on themselves, the full musical range of Ethiopia’s golden years opens up and Alémayéhu Eshété, the Wallis Band and Tlahoun Gésséssé become friends for life. Think about it: the Imperial Bodyguard Band tried to railroad their country into modernity through soul. They were beaten back by greater forces, true, but here’s what they left us. Not roads, aqueducts or sanitation, just the funk.

David Hutcheon

 
 "The essential introduction to Ethiopian music"

Compared to the high profile that West Africa has on the world music scene, East Africa has remained very much in the shadows. In the case of Ethiopia, there are political reasons for this. A golden age of Ethiopian music was brought to an end by the Mengistu dictatorship (1974-1991), during which many musicians emigrated, and the current scene in Ethiopia is as a result little-known outside the country. What we do know is largely thanks to the energetic and selfless work of Francis Falceto and his hugely admired Éthiopiques series for Buda. Since we first covered it back in Songlines #3 (when a series of 15 CDs was projected), this has proved a lifeline for fans of Ethiopian music. But with the series now at 21 CDs and counting, there’s clearly a need for this budget-priced two CD overview.

The two discs feature tracks by the star vocalists Mahmoud Ahmed (his famous ‘Erè Mèla Mèla’), and Tlahoun Gèssèssè (the awesome ‘Sema’), both still little-known in the West. There are also gems by many others and brief notes by Francis Falceto to introduce them. The selection was made by Iain Scott who played his own part in the story of Ethiopian music, releasing the albums of Aster Aweke from the late 80s. Inevitably, the selection favours the urban and commercial aspects of the Éthiopiques series, so more traditional performers such as Asnaqètch Wèrqu, and azmari nightclub musicians, don’t get in. However, an other-worldly ‘Pater Noster’ from Alèmu Aga, played on the begena – or ‘Harp of King David’ – rounds the selection off. The essential introduction to Ethiopian music.

Simon Broughton 

 
 "Is there any musicmore alluring (...) more down right sexy?"

Despite it being the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, the music of Ethiopia has remained conspicuously underwhelming to European
ears – only US residing song birds Aster Aweke and Gigi have turned Western heads in recent times. Aside from that there is a long running series of largely vintage recordings from the ‘60s and ‘70s whose name has become a by-word for quality, mystery and captivation – Ethiopiques. Currently running to 21 absorbing volumes, it’s a series that’s converted A-list names to the glories of otherwise long forgotten music, among them Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Brian Eno.

The Very Best Of Ethiopiques does exactly what you’d expect, undertaking the unenviable task of distilling 28 tracks from across the whole series, and spreading them across two discs. What’s immediately apparent is the extraordinary breadth of music being played in the swinging clubs of Addis Ababa 30 or 40 years ago. We get funk blues and loads of jazz inflected flavours, but it sounds so different, so-er-Ethiopian. As Elvis Costello observes, it’s music “from a strange and wonderful place of its own”. Its also proof that the likes of Mahmoud Ahmed and Mulatu Astatqé should have been huge stars in their homeland (although Hollywood has recently given Astatqé a belated leg up, by heavily featuring his music on the sound track to the Bill Murray vehicle Broken Flowers). Allow yourself to be cast under the Ethiopiques spell and then answer this question. Is there any music – anywhere – more alluring, more seductive, more down right sexy?

Nige Tassell

 
 "astonishing music"

At the end of the Sixties and the early Seventies, Ethiopia was in the dying years of the imperial decline of Haile Selassie and the early years of a brutally repressive junta led by Mengistu. Within the confines of this stifling and constrictive environment there flowered some astonishing music. At times showing Fela Kuti’s influences, in the big band sax flavour and other times a different take on regional music, this is a music that is accessible to all and has been championed by the likes of Robert Plant, Brian Eno and Elvis Costello.  It is the fresh sound of spiritual freedom.

Nicky Tesco

 
 "This double CD is a revelation" 18 Aug Album Of The Week

This double CD is a revelation. From the vaults of the Buda Musique label comes a mesmerising collection of tracks recorded in Ethiopia from the Sixties onwards that has until now been a secret of the cognoscenti. Ranging from dreamy blues to wild R&B, with jazz-style piano thrown in, the material is fascinating and addictive. It could do for Ethiopia what the Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuba.

Roger Trapp