Ethiopiques

Before the images of starvation, things were different in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, the capital, rocked, and small labels, notably Amha, released a plethora of modern local music. That's the scene Frenchman Francis Falceto has documented in his Ethiopiques series. The most recent, Vol. 8: Swinging Addis captures the soul sounds of the city.

"The bands weren't as powerful as American soul bands, but they were groovy," Falceto noted. And whether it's saxophonist Tesfa-Maryam Kidane sounding like Booker T and the Mgs on "Yetesfa Tezeta" or singer Aleymayehu Eshete, whom Falceto called "the James Brown of Africa," cranking up the funk on "Hasabe," it's definitely soul music, even if it sometimes seems to be beamed in from another planet.

"I was in Addis Ababa from 1965-1975, and the music brings up a lot of good memories," recalled producer Neway Mengistu of Kefey Entertainment "It's very representative of modern Ethiopian music. It presents a different picture of Ethiopia at the time. Most people think of the Emperor Haile Selassie. But obviously there was a great deal going on, and that was reflected in the music."

"If we could regain our pride, we could defeat all the obstacles facing us now, like hunger, backwardness, and really flourish."

The Ethiopiques series covers a lot of ground, from the Ethio-jazz of Mulatu Astatke, who shared the stage with the great Duke Ellington when the latter played in the country, to the exquisite sadness of vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed, one of Ethiopia's top voices for over three decades.

There's even a contemporary disc (Vol.2) covering the underground folk scene of the Azmaris, the bohemians who appear in nightclubs and dives around the capital. They've appeared since the fall of the Marxist dictatorship that ruled the country from 1974-1991. After that period of repression, said Falceto, who'd been vainly trying to license the music of Ethiopia's ‘Golden Age' for release, things began to open up "and I could see it was possible to get somewhere. From 1992 on, things have changed. Then I quit my job, and since then I've gone to Ethiopia three times a year, working on these discs."

For Westerners it's interesting that many of the musicians of the ‘60s and ‘70s came out of the regimented military and police bands. But Falceto explained that under the Selassie's regime, "it was impossible to buy a saxophone; only marching bands could import them. And those bands played marching music, Western music. Once the musicians became proficient, they began playing their own music, and their modern music slowly found its own way out."

It was helped by an influx of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers who brought their own records. In a country with 3,000 years of recorded history, American music became "the icon of modernity. It was fashionable, it impressed people." But not all the people.

"It has to be seen in context," emphasized Mengistu. "It was music for the elite from Addis Ababa, but 90% of Ethiopians are farmers, living rurally. And even in the urban area, very few could go to the nightclubs where it was played."

Still, the music does offer insights into a time and place, where Ethiopians wore Afros and flares, and songs likes Girma Beyene's "Yebeqagnal" played on the jukboxes.

For Falceto, putting this series together has been a labor of love, and it's far from over. Falceto has just finished work on the next installment, dedicated to Alemayehu Eshete (who currently lives in poverty in Virginia), and has plans for six more after that. There is material for more but "I'm not releasing the bad stuff, just the best from the Amha catalogue, and another, smaller label, Kaifa."

To Mengistu, although the music was fun, he wondered whether "it might be a curse to take cultural values and expressions from elsewhere that don't necessarily fit with that society."

The spirit of Ethiopia has changed; national identity has vanished, and it needs to return. "104 years ago, the Ethiopians defeated Italy in the battle of Adwa; it was the first time Africans had defeated a Western power," he said. "That was a big source of pride. If we could regain that, we could defeat all the obstacles facing us now, like hunger, backwardness, and really flourish."

Ethiopiques

"If we could regain our pride, we could defeat all the obstacles facing us now, like hunger, backwardness, and really flourish."

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