Ethiopiques S/D

listening to ethiopiques 17, RIP tlahoun gessesse...

http://www.thefader.com/articles/2009/4/16/q-a-freeload-mulatu-astatke-the-heliocentrics-masengo

^ so hot

How did I miss out on all of this? I only have Vol 4 (Mulatu Astatke) and Vol 4 (Solo Piano, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou), but drooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.

Track 4 on Vol 4, "Tezeta (Nostalgia)" may be my favorite new (to me at least) song I've heard all year.

oops, meant Vol 4 and Vol 21.

Track 4 on Vol 4, "Tezeta (Nostalgia)" may be my favorite new (to me at least) song I've heard all year.

Yeah, this is my favorite song from the series (Vol. 4 is probably my favorite disc from the series, too). I think Tezeta was also on the Broken Flower movie soundtrack.

4 & 21 are both dope

Ah man, I don't want to feel like I've already heard all the best stuff!

Maybe I'll seek out the best of and try to scope out what direction to go from here.

There's one from a female piano player that's lovely. The songs aren't terribly memorable, but the playing has such a nice touch and feel.

Are you talking about Vol. 21, Solo Piano, by Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou?

dude, there is so much more great stuff in this series. you may have peaked early but there's more peaking to be peaked.

Getatchew Mekurya!

ZS: Yes, that's the one.

I have Vol 13, which is amazing.

ya there are tons of great ones.

21 is just so perfect... listen to it late at night in the middle of the summer sometime.

xpost - One of my favorites. BTW I would pay, like, $20 to hear your band try to cover "Gud Aderegetchegn."

so many of these are great. vol. 4 is the first one i got but i don't know if it's the best. alemayehu eshete's (vol. 9) is def one the best vocal ones. vol. 1 is great too. emusic has them all which is really nice

Are many of these on vinyl? After a quick search I can only seem to find a few: Vol 1 at Boomkat, and some comment mentioning how glad the person is that L' Arôme Productions is issuing it all on vinyl. A search for L' Arôme Productions and Ethiopiques, typically, yields nothing.

I've never seen a single one of these on vinyl, but I'm not really looking, either.

let's not forget the mahmoud ahmed ones... saw him live a couple of years ago, A+

Man, that guy has a ton of product available at eMusic. Vol. 7 has the song Tezeta, which M. Matos had this to say about: "The 15-song set's final track, "Tezeta," is one of the most beautiful records in any category, from any place — pirouetting recorder, languid organ, soulful guitar, comforting bass line and Ahmed nudging along a sun-kissed, indelible melody." Bold claim.

alemayehu eshete's (vol. 9) is def one the best vocal ones

Yeah, this one is great. Hard to describe. Kind of Middle Eastern singing over some hard funk played on Armenian scales, or something.

Diamanda Galas:

The only music I hear that resembles where American music should go today is Ethiopian music because it combines the knowledge of Byzantium with extra-Ethiopian influences. Keep in mind that Greeks, Ethiopians, and many Egyptians go to the same Byzantine churches, the Greek and Coptic churches. We were raised on the same music.

American people think you go to Ethiopia to claim your heritage, and we all just laugh. Wait 'til you get there, brother. It ain't about black, it's about culture. Culture is under the skin. It is not on top of it. That is “bling”. To us bling is just a cheap rip-off of the ancient masters. So—“too little, too late, too weak, too bad, motherfucker” is what I say to those who do not read. And in the living rooms of my apartments have been many a throwdown over this comment. I laugh.

Cooleh

I'm not really sure what she has in mind specifically (about American music and Ethiopian music), but these interview comments are at least provocative. (Good interview in general, and as always I am gratified by her list of artists she respects, which this time around includes La Lupe, Stelios Kazantzidis, and Marinella, to name the ones that are also my favorites.)

"And in the living rooms of my apartments have been many a throwdown over this comment."

?!?!

My Throwdown With Diamanda

im going to be out of town for the getachew/ex shows in september ;_;

Oh that sucks. They were awesome in Chicago.

yeah, and the ex is prob one of my top 3 live bands ever :(

potentially dumb question I could have googled instead of asking here: what does "Tezeta" mean and why are 1/2 of the best songs called "Tezeta"?

Tezeta (or tizeta) roughly translates to memories (with nostalgia a strong subtext), yearning for something in the past that can never be recovered

its a standard so you are mostly hearing different interpretations of the same song. it is also a musical mode that you can compose in)

in more detail, quoting from a friend's paper
" In the Amharic lexicon one finds three related meanings for the noun tizita. First, it means memory, the enterprise of memory; and some lexicons, though parenthetically, specify it as nostalgia to intimate more pointedly memory (of loss and longing), an intimation that underlines the term’s attendant mood, its melancholy, a mood discernable in the way Amharic speakers employ the term even in the most quotidian exchanges. Secondly, tizita refers to one of the four scales or modes in secular Ethiopian music, a mode in which the term’s lexical meaning finds sonic figuration. Third, and incorporating the two, tizita refers to a signature ballad in the Amharic songbook, a ballad whose sonic and lexical impetus is to figure loss."

now have to go check out that diamanda interview

thank you for the last 6 years of posting, H. It's good to be kept up to date on all this.

Sounds pretty similar to the concept of saudade, in a way.

Hey, thanks sleeve for saying that

Yeah ned, you can draw a link between tizeta, saudade, morna (tho obv saudaude and morna have more obv links)

Curmudgeon, so did you ever made it to the Lincoln Center concert last summer? I put that show together together then, due to airline fuckery, ended up missing it, but all the musicians got there and did get raves for the show which made it somewhat more bearable

I was at the Barbican show last Summer in London and I have to say it was one of the most life affirming, joyous shows I have ever attended...hope they do another...

Curmudgeon, so did you ever made it to the Lincoln Center concert last summer? I put that show together together then, due to airline fuckery, ended up missing it, but all the musicians got there and did get raves for the show which made it somewhat more bearable

― H in Addis, Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:31

I'm from DC and did not make it up there. There are frequently shows in DC (and local Ethiopian bands here) but the gigs are rarely promoted outside the Ethiopian community. I try to look for flyers and Ethiopian newspapers at local restaurants and ask about the gigs. There is a show coming up at the 930 club. I think this is the first time there's been an Ethiopian show there: Ethiopian Labor Day HomeComing w/ Gosaye Tesfaye & Ephrem Tamiru.

Oh, I did see Getachew with the Ex in DC at Black Cat

"Tezeta" is great. Matos wrote about it nicely here or elsewhere I recall.

I missed Mahmoud Ahmed in DC yesterday. He was at a reggae summerfest that had 20 some acts and I decided I did not want to see them all.

Nice 2008 Ethiopian song from Gosaye Tesfaye & Ephrem Tamiru who are currently touring the US. The video takes a few seconds before starting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb3b3SlVE9k

lil story on Getachew & the Ex on French TV.

http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/groove-ethiopien-4513551.html

Awww man, I'm flying out of DC for the weekend and its Ethiopian Appreciation Day at Nationals Park with Mahmoud Ahmed performing at a special banquet event in the late afternoon before the baseball game that night.

ETHIOPIAN HERITAGE APPRECIATION DAY BEGINS AT 3 P.M. AT NATIONALS PARK,
1500 SOUTH CAPITOL ST. SE. $14.75–30.50. EAFC.ORG FOR TICKETS AND INFO

2010 in DC is starting out with Ethiopia's biggest current pop star Teddy Afro in Washington on Saturday. I'm not crazy about his reggae-smooth r'n'b sound.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2009/12/31/teddy-afro-ethiopias-bob-marley-at-the-armory-saturday/

Currently in love with Ethiopiques Vol. 24, especially "Mariyé marwèlèla" by Wubshèt Fisseha & Exception Five Band. Kinda taken aback at how many of the songs sound like Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti source material.

Side note of possible interest: If you haven't visited Awesome Tapes From Africa, it might do ya good to swing by the site. Great selection of items, including [I think] Ethiopia.

will do, thanks.

A thread!: awesome tapes from africa

Gonna miss Mahmoud Ahmed live again (busy with family). He's at the 930 Club in Washington DC Sunday night with Ephrem Tameru.

On the Rolling African thread I wrote about an unnamed DC area Ethiopian woman singer I saw and liked, and about

And I picked up a postcard for the Ethiopian show billed as "for the first time in America Helen Berhe" and "the talented Abraham Gebremedhin with the Zion band Sat. April 30 at DC Star 2135 Queens Chapel RD NE DC ethiostarent.com

Rolling African Music 2011 Thread

I don't really like this concept of "African Music" - I don't think the stuff on the Ethiopiques records, or Ethiopian music generally, has anything to do with music from other countries in the continent. Talking about "African Music" seems to be about as useful as talking about "European Music".

amusingly, that makes ME a curmudgeon. will Curmudgeon now reveal that he is actually a dirty vicar?

Obviously there's a problem with non-Africans tendency to talk about "Africa" like it's a country instead of a continent, but so few people post on that thread anyway that breaking it into even smaller areas of interest would kill it. I don't know enough about Ethiopian music to talk about its similarities or difference in depth, but surely it has commonalities with Eritrean, Somalian, Kenyan, or Tanzanian music. I don't know, maybe more people would post on a Rolling West African thread, or a Rolling Nigerian Music thread, but I would be surprised.

i dunno, is talking about "american" music not useful? and don't people talk about "european" musical traditions? i agree, it's totally problematic in a lot of ways, but i don't know if it's entirely pointless.

Dirty Vicar, curmudgeon may revive the world music thread just for that.