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ITHIOPIQUES: SOUNDS OF ETHIOPIA THE GENERALS COULD NOT CRUSH
David Hutcheon
The Times
June 14, 2008
UK
A group of great African musicians whose careers were blighted by a
brutal Marxist regime are back. Our correspondent hears their story
The sound of women doing laundry filters through the front door
and electricity is intermittent. A cat chases a rat across the
corrugated-iron roof, ruining another vocal take. Just another day in
the studio in Addis Ababa, August 2006. Tsedenia Gebremarkos prepares
to try again.
It wasn't always this way. In the late 1960s, Ethiopia was home to some
of the funkiest big bands on the continent, long before the country
was pegged as a drought-stricken hell by Band Aid. Forty years on,
a concert at the Barbican in London on June 27 brings together for
the first time the era's greatest stars: the singers Mahmoud Ahmed
and Alè-mayèhu Eshèté, the saxophonist Gétatchèw Mèkurya and
pianist Mulatu Astatqé.
Musically and emotionally, it promises to be among the gigs of the
year. The following night they headline at Glastonbury, an inspired
alternative to Jay-Z.
"It's beautiful," says Astatqé of the reunion. "I think I've played
with each of them in the past, but not in at least 20 years.
You put it all together, all those different types of music
. . . Beautiful."
The way he whispers his favourite adjective betrays his background
on the London jazz scene of the 1960s. There is still a trace of
modernist cool about the dapper man I meet in a restaurant bar,
and it is easy to picture him in his twenties, hanging out in the
Metro Club on Tottenham Court Road with his friends Ronnie Scott,
Joe Harriott and Tubby Hayes, the tenor sax player who encouraged
him to play vibes. That is, when he wasn't on the stands at Arsenal,
cheering on the team he still follows.
Astatqé later moved to the US to study at Berklee College of Music
in Boston and live the Johnny Staccato life in New York. "At the time,
the three corners of Africa were all there," he recalls, referring to
Fela Kuti from Nigeria, and the South African "Hughie" Masekela. In
1966, in cahoots with a group of like-minded souls, he recorded two
LPs called Afro-Latin Soul, the first "Ethiojazz" albums.
Currently a fellow at Harvard University, where he discusses Charlie
Parker with mathematicians and Miles Davis with geneticists, Astatqé
enjoys explaining Ethiopian musical theory. There are three legs of
Ethiopian pop, he tells me: traditional folk culture and the music
of the Azmari minstrels; the Coptic church, which split from the rest
of the Christian world in the 5th century; and Haile Selassie's love
of brass bands.
Country, gospel and horns: these, unsurprisingly, are the same
ingredients that shaped American soul and Jamaican reggae. Using a
pentatonic scale, the Ethiopian groove sounds familiar but strange, as
if holding up a cracked mirror to Otis Redding or Aretha Franklin. "The
same universal notes connect us all," Astatqé smiles. "We had them
centuries ago, but the genius of the European composers was to spread
them round the world."
When he returned home in 1968, he found Ethiopia enjoying a pop
explosion. A mood of freedom had swept through the country in the
1960s, enabling the growth of independent record labels which used
moonlighting musicians from the brass bands. Selassie had invited
Armenian horn players to his country in 1924, and encouraged the
formation of orchestras under the auspices of the police, Army and
imperial bodyguards. But despite the emperor's patronage, music was
still the occupation of disreputable troubadours: Eshèté, known
as the "Abyssinian Elvis" or "Ethiopian James Brown" at different
stages in his career, will never forget his shamed, gun-wielding
father chasing him through a nightclub.
For almost a decade, Addis was every bit as swinging as London, but
a hardline Marxist Government seized power in 1974. The Derg, lead by
General Mengistu Haile Mariam, imprisoned Selassie and his followers
and enthusiastically waged civil and international wars while leading
their country into chaos. The lights went out on Africa's most exciting
nightlife. "They objected to the Western music that we were playing,"
Astatqé says. "They didn't come out and say it, but we knew." To
survive, he composed soundtracks for political plays and recorded
cassettes of folk music for Ethiopian Airlines' in-flight radio. Others
were less fortunate, forced out of music in order to make a living as
the economy collapsed. Eshèté simply refers to the period as "hell".
Although the Derg lost power in 1987, the shattered country remained in
darkness for years afterwards. Even today, life for a young musician
is tough, as I learn when talking to Samuel Yerga, the 21-year-old
keyboard prodigy with Dub Colossus, the band whose recording sessions
were interrupted by the cat and rat. They will also be playing the
Barbican and Glastonbury shows, though they travel light.
"I didn't have a piano until this spring," he says, "but most musicians
don't own their instruments, we just can't afford them. There are
so many other problems for the Government to fix first that music
is still not an accepted part of the culture again. After the Derg,
we are the first wave to break the ice, to take traditional music and
turn it around. It will be good to see how people react." He shouldn't
have too much to worry about, Ethiopian music has never had quite as
much cachet beyond the country's boundaries.
The mainstream revival of interest sprung from the efforts of
Francis Falceto, a French music promoter. He heard a track by
Mahmoud Ahmed, travelled to Addis and found the singer working in a
shop. A man possessed, Falceto hunted out the musicians and producers
responsible, bought all the original vinyl he could find, and convinced
a record label to release a compilation of the best. Nothing shoddy
or opportunistic: the musicians had to be given the platform they
deserved. The Ã~Ithiopiques series, which now numbers 23 volumes plus
a Very Best Of endorsed by everybody from Elvis Costello and Robert
Plant to Arcade Fire, was one of the cult hits of last year, and
the live dates look like taking Astatqé et al to a whole different
level of fame. He may have seen it all before, but the second bite
will still be special.
"I want to take this moment and build on it," he says, clearly
relishing the opportunity. "I want to rediscover what was lost. That
would be beautiful. Beautiful."
Ithiopiques, Barbican, London EC2 (www.barbican.org.uk 020-7638 8891),
Jun 27 2008 (returns only)
--Boundary_(ID_A8rmB8kW9EA1ND0fpjeTwQ)--
David Hutcheon
The Times
June 14, 2008
UK
A group of great African musicians whose careers were blighted by a
brutal Marxist regime are back. Our correspondent hears their story
The sound of women doing laundry filters through the front door
and electricity is intermittent. A cat chases a rat across the
corrugated-iron roof, ruining another vocal take. Just another day in
the studio in Addis Ababa, August 2006. Tsedenia Gebremarkos prepares
to try again.
It wasn't always this way. In the late 1960s, Ethiopia was home to some
of the funkiest big bands on the continent, long before the country
was pegged as a drought-stricken hell by Band Aid. Forty years on,
a concert at the Barbican in London on June 27 brings together for
the first time the era's greatest stars: the singers Mahmoud Ahmed
and Alè-mayèhu Eshèté, the saxophonist Gétatchèw Mèkurya and
pianist Mulatu Astatqé.
Musically and emotionally, it promises to be among the gigs of the
year. The following night they headline at Glastonbury, an inspired
alternative to Jay-Z.
"It's beautiful," says Astatqé of the reunion. "I think I've played
with each of them in the past, but not in at least 20 years.
You put it all together, all those different types of music
. . . Beautiful."
The way he whispers his favourite adjective betrays his background
on the London jazz scene of the 1960s. There is still a trace of
modernist cool about the dapper man I meet in a restaurant bar,
and it is easy to picture him in his twenties, hanging out in the
Metro Club on Tottenham Court Road with his friends Ronnie Scott,
Joe Harriott and Tubby Hayes, the tenor sax player who encouraged
him to play vibes. That is, when he wasn't on the stands at Arsenal,
cheering on the team he still follows.
Astatqé later moved to the US to study at Berklee College of Music
in Boston and live the Johnny Staccato life in New York. "At the time,
the three corners of Africa were all there," he recalls, referring to
Fela Kuti from Nigeria, and the South African "Hughie" Masekela. In
1966, in cahoots with a group of like-minded souls, he recorded two
LPs called Afro-Latin Soul, the first "Ethiojazz" albums.
Currently a fellow at Harvard University, where he discusses Charlie
Parker with mathematicians and Miles Davis with geneticists, Astatqé
enjoys explaining Ethiopian musical theory. There are three legs of
Ethiopian pop, he tells me: traditional folk culture and the music
of the Azmari minstrels; the Coptic church, which split from the rest
of the Christian world in the 5th century; and Haile Selassie's love
of brass bands.
Country, gospel and horns: these, unsurprisingly, are the same
ingredients that shaped American soul and Jamaican reggae. Using a
pentatonic scale, the Ethiopian groove sounds familiar but strange, as
if holding up a cracked mirror to Otis Redding or Aretha Franklin. "The
same universal notes connect us all," Astatqé smiles. "We had them
centuries ago, but the genius of the European composers was to spread
them round the world."
When he returned home in 1968, he found Ethiopia enjoying a pop
explosion. A mood of freedom had swept through the country in the
1960s, enabling the growth of independent record labels which used
moonlighting musicians from the brass bands. Selassie had invited
Armenian horn players to his country in 1924, and encouraged the
formation of orchestras under the auspices of the police, Army and
imperial bodyguards. But despite the emperor's patronage, music was
still the occupation of disreputable troubadours: Eshèté, known
as the "Abyssinian Elvis" or "Ethiopian James Brown" at different
stages in his career, will never forget his shamed, gun-wielding
father chasing him through a nightclub.
For almost a decade, Addis was every bit as swinging as London, but
a hardline Marxist Government seized power in 1974. The Derg, lead by
General Mengistu Haile Mariam, imprisoned Selassie and his followers
and enthusiastically waged civil and international wars while leading
their country into chaos. The lights went out on Africa's most exciting
nightlife. "They objected to the Western music that we were playing,"
Astatqé says. "They didn't come out and say it, but we knew." To
survive, he composed soundtracks for political plays and recorded
cassettes of folk music for Ethiopian Airlines' in-flight radio. Others
were less fortunate, forced out of music in order to make a living as
the economy collapsed. Eshèté simply refers to the period as "hell".
Although the Derg lost power in 1987, the shattered country remained in
darkness for years afterwards. Even today, life for a young musician
is tough, as I learn when talking to Samuel Yerga, the 21-year-old
keyboard prodigy with Dub Colossus, the band whose recording sessions
were interrupted by the cat and rat. They will also be playing the
Barbican and Glastonbury shows, though they travel light.
"I didn't have a piano until this spring," he says, "but most musicians
don't own their instruments, we just can't afford them. There are
so many other problems for the Government to fix first that music
is still not an accepted part of the culture again. After the Derg,
we are the first wave to break the ice, to take traditional music and
turn it around. It will be good to see how people react." He shouldn't
have too much to worry about, Ethiopian music has never had quite as
much cachet beyond the country's boundaries.
The mainstream revival of interest sprung from the efforts of
Francis Falceto, a French music promoter. He heard a track by
Mahmoud Ahmed, travelled to Addis and found the singer working in a
shop. A man possessed, Falceto hunted out the musicians and producers
responsible, bought all the original vinyl he could find, and convinced
a record label to release a compilation of the best. Nothing shoddy
or opportunistic: the musicians had to be given the platform they
deserved. The Ã~Ithiopiques series, which now numbers 23 volumes plus
a Very Best Of endorsed by everybody from Elvis Costello and Robert
Plant to Arcade Fire, was one of the cult hits of last year, and
the live dates look like taking Astatqé et al to a whole different
level of fame. He may have seen it all before, but the second bite
will still be special.
"I want to take this moment and build on it," he says, clearly
relishing the opportunity. "I want to rediscover what was lost. That
would be beautiful. Beautiful."
Ithiopiques, Barbican, London EC2 (www.barbican.org.uk 020-7638 8891),
Jun 27 2008 (returns only)
--Boundary_(ID_A8rmB8kW9EA1ND0fpjeTwQ)--