ETHIO-JAZZ: THE NEXT WAVE
Ethiopia is an ancient land, a fabled land, home of one of the oldest Christian sects as well as an early branch of Judaism. There are churches there carved out of solid rock hills and Ethiopians say the Ark Of The Covenant is there. The last reigning monarch, Haile Selassie, who was overthrown in 1974, could trace his linage back to ancient times, some say to Solomon and Sheba and was considered a manifestation of God on earth by Rastafarians. Huge and mountainous, Ethiopian has its own unique musical traditions. Until Francis Falceto launched his exemplary Ethiopiques series of compilations in 1998, not much Ethiopian music was heard outside Ethiopia and Ethiopian communities around the world. With the exception of a couple of remarkable albums by female vocalist Aster Aweke and some recordings by male vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed, . Now up to nearly 30 volumes, Ethiopiques has brought to light a wide range of Ethiopian music, especially from the Golden Age of the Seventies, before a Marxist government shut the music scene down. During that era in Ethiopia bands bringing together jazz, funk and Afrobeat in combination with the distinctively haunting Ethiopian traditional scales and off-kilter rhythms created a new style of popular music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJcOTy2G1c0
The music began to be heard more widely around the globe, thanks to Ethiopiques, sparking the imagination of many musicians. Now a new wave of Ethiopian and Ethiopian-influenced recordings is surfacing from artists ranging from original innovator Mulatu Astake to various aggregations of European, American and Ethiopian musicians such as The Debo Band, Dub Colossus, The Imperial Tiger Orchestra, The Either/Orchestra and The Invisible System Band. What’s striking about these artists is that they aren’t content to simply replicate the glories of Ethiopia’s Golden Age but are breaking new ground as they bring sounds and rhythms from around the world, from jazz, rock, soul, reggae, and electronica, into the mix. The good news is that most of them are great!
Let’s start with the new album from the master musician, Mulatu Astake. Now 70 years old, Astake studied music in the UK began playing jazz and in the 196o‘s became the first African student at Boston’s Berklee College Of Music, studying vibraphone and percussion (he also plays keyboards). Hanging out on the jazz scene, he became very involved with Latin music and also encountered Nigerian percussionist Olatunji. Returning to Ethiopia in the early 1970’s, Astake created a new style which he dubbed “Ethiojazz”, fusing Latin music and jazz with Ethiopian music. As bandleader, composer, arranger and sideman, Malatu Astake influenced the course of Ethiopian popular music and was involved with creation of many hits.
His beautifully recorded new album, “Sketches Of Ethiopia”, seems to be a distillation of all the best elements of Astake’s work. “Azmari”, the opening track, feels like an overture, with Latin percussion, Ethoipian fiddle and cello and horns topped by fiddle soloing. The second track, underpinned by an Afrobeat bassline, quotres a horn line from a Studio One reggae hit as Ethiopian vocals break down into something resembling Ituri (pygmy) polyphony. And so it goes, shifting textures and sounds from track to track, always with organic feel and gorgeous results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtlaUBhY7m8
The Imperial Tiger Orchestra is a Swiss-based group formed in 2007 by a polyglot group of Europeans who met at a jam session. Their performances have a very “jammy” feel but in a good way with a sense of spontaneous fun. While Ethiopian scales and rhythms are central to their music-making, they have no compulsion to replicate Ethiopian music literally. So their music is jazz but a jazz whose palette includes not only jazz and Ethiopian elements but other elements as well. Imperial Tiger Orchestra follows their inspiration freely. They have four albums; I’ve heard two, 2010’s “Addis Ababa” and 2011’s “Mercato”; both are consistently excellent. They released “Wax” in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XjgrV5fVw
The Either/Orchestra is a Boston-based “small” big band formed nearly two decades ago, one of the few ensembles to creatively carry on the big band tradition but with more improvisation than usual in a big band context. They’ve worked in a number of different styles, including Latin music and avante-garde-explorations. In 2000 they started incorporating Ethiopian elements in their palette. In 2004, they were the only non-Ethiopian group to perform Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa. They then recorded an album in collaboration with a number of Ethiopian musicians, including Mulatu Astake. This was released as Ethiopiques #20. Later they recorded an album with Mahmoud Ahmed. Their outstanding, fiery playing makes these inspired recordings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUlEooT8V4s
The Invisible System Band is more than invisible. It doesn’t actually exist. Rather it is the project of UK producer Dan Harper, a former aid worker in Ethiopian. His modus operandi is to bring together a shifting, wildly diverse array or musicians from Africa, Europe and America to make free-wheeling fusions of Ethiopian music, reggae, dub, techno, rock, psychedelia and folk music. Much of the music was create spontaneously in studio jams and some of it seems to have been assembled from disparate pieces recorded at different times. It is the type of thing that often turns into an incoherent mess or a dull document of musicians failing to connect with one another. Amazingly more often than not The Invisible System Band succeeds, delivering music that is fresh, viscerally exciting and substantive. It is the rare cross-cultural experiment that works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKfZJZ53wQ8&list=PLxk8n4uhh-TO2rE2XE_Q5of2uVf76DzF-
As these albums show, Ethiopian music is now an accepted part of the palette musicians around the world draw on. Like reggae, Afrobeat and jazz, formerly esoteric and parochial Ethio sounds and rhythms are now truly components of humanity’s “universal language.”
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