cornette oldman

milessmiles:

Mulato Astatke and His Ethiopian Quintet—“Shagu”

Afro-Latin Soul (Worthy 1966).

thepawnshop:

Mahmoud Ahmed, “Mar Teb Yee Lalque” Great Afrobeat song.  

kueneman:

Mahmoud Ahmed shined shoes before he became a singer in the early 1960s. He would go on to sing in a group called The Imperial Body Guard Band, which sounds pretty damn awesome, or perhaps extremely groovy and/or sinister. Ethiopiques Vol. 1 collects the work of a few key Ethiopian artists and features three tracks from Ahmed.

[click to get]

i got all whacked out thinking maybe this doesn’t count as jazz and maybe shouldn’t be included but that entire line of argument was lame.

mahmoud ahmed’s half crooner/ half full-throated howler; abbay mado- embwa belew (track 1) and eho ho gedama (track 4) are striking in their range, and when he flexes his vibrato it saturates the tracks. the horns on here (can it really be only 2?) sound like slow moving freight trains and the melodies are hypnotic. this cat’s still rocking out on stage too. note that this is not ethiopiques vol, 7 or the 1986 version!

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Mulatu Astatke, the godfather of Ethiopian jazz music, is often flying around the world performing sell-out shows so [it] was lucky to find him at his home in Addis Ababa surrounded by art, conjuring up magic on his vibraphone - which looks like a giant xylophone.

He described the recipe for Ethio-jazz which he first cooked up 42 years ago while studying music in the United States.

“Most of our Ethiopian music is based on five notes [pentatonic]. What I did was fuse the five tones with 12 tones. For many years I’ve been experimenting and the more I do that the more complex it gets”….

(Source: ibrations)

the thing about broken flowers is no joke-  watching that film and searching out the ethiopiques series after were like being plucked up by the hand of god. the term ethio-jazz comes from the genre’s progenitor, mulatu astatke, who introduced elements and instruments from other musical traditions, notably latin jazz, the vibraphone, and congas, to ethiopian music in the 70s.

astatke is an innovator and giant of modern ethiopian music, but he helped foster a teeming scene of musicians, composers, and singers in ethiopia in the 70s and 80s. a lot of the stuff recorded at the time on labels like amha, kaifa, and phillips has since been re-released on the ethiopiques series, which french label buda musique started in 1998. ethiopiques is going on #27 (!) and i love em, but cornette oldman has a special affinity for full albums and the sacred process of listening to them, so we’re going to eschew the singles and compilations and focus on the full length releases.

this week: ethio-jazz: albums only

doesn’t count, since it’s about jazz, but a) it’s saturday and b) who cares

as we enter

this movie put me on to mulatu astatke in particular and ethio-jazz in general, making it reason #355,903,841 that jim jarmusch has my undying love and affection. unlike the other films featured this week, the soundtrack for broken flowers just relies heavily on one composer’s music- but mulatu astatke didn’t actually score the movie or have a hand in its music selection or arrangement. the soundtrack album is fairly eclectic, but astatke dominates the film. yegelle tezeta’s playing during half of it and it’s killer.