About 20 years ago, when I first started putting together a collection
of African music, I bought a number of Ethiopique records, an anthology
now available in CD. Last night I went to an outdoor concert at Lincoln
Center that included Mahmoud Ahmed, one of my favorite artists.
Organized by the “alternative” music FM station WFMU, the concert paired
Ethiopian superstars such as Ahmed with Western bands such as the Either
Orchestra. Thankfully, since Either Orchestra’s approach is to emulate
the sound of Ethiopian bands of the 1960s and 70s, the so called Golden
Era, there was no clash between singer and instrumentalists.
To get a handle on Ethiopian music, a good place to start is the WFMU
blog entry on last night’s concert, which includes some mp3’s.
I was planning on writing about Ethiopian music anyhow, but was
additionally motivated to do so after seeing that Lenin’s Tomb’s latest
post involved Ethiopia:
"The very logic of centralisation and homogenisation - under which
Emperor Haile Selassie would later repress regional demands for autonomy
and quash the Ethiopian-Eritrean federation, and which validated the
destructive centralism of the Derg - would have important consequences
for the emergence of Ethiopian nationalism partly as a result of the
victory at Adwa. On the one hand, it created a predatory state in which
the martial class was at liberty to appropriate from the peasants even
during peacetime. It also threatened to undermine the basis for national
unity precisely through its repression of regional identities. On the
other hand, though a relatively powerful army had been built, the Battle
of Adwa was notable for being a popular war."
Before getting into Ethiopian politics, I should say a word or two about
Ethiopian music. Unlike just about all other Sub-Saharan pop music,
except for South Africa, there is no Afro-Latin influence. Guitars and
drums play a secondary role, as opposed to Congolese soukous or
Senegalese mbalax. About the closest cousin on the continent is Fela’s
big band. But unlike Fela, whose songs evoked James Brown, his Ethiopian
counterparts sing in a modal style unique to the country that sounds
vaguely East Asian. Called qenet, it varies slightly from the Western
tempered tuning system.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/ethiopian-music/
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