Swinging Addis

Eritrea calling: The otherworldly funk of Ethiopia

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More About

• Mulatu Astatqe
• Mahmoud Ahmed
• Addis Ababa
• Bob Marley
• Emperor Haile Selassie I

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The sampling of the label's Tigrigna releases on Ethiopiques 5, Tigrigna Music 1970-1975 introduces a music potentially more polyrhythmic than Ethiopian pop with layered guitars and a singing style that seems to float between measures. But a huge clomping beat on the two and four (one that's been compared to the gait of a camel) cancels out any swing potential this otherwise ebullient music has to offer. Never mind, this stuff has a magic of its own, including selections by electric-guitar wizard Tewelde Redda. Redda could go head-to-head with Mali's Ali Farka Toure, and his funky horn-charged "Nehadar Zeytkewen" with the James Brown-influenced All Star Band establishes a much-needed oasis from the monolithic drumbeating. With the female artists, you do have to develop an immunity to screechy vocals -- even from a woman with so genteel an appellation as Tebereh "Doris Day" Tesfa-Hunegn, who currently runs a bar outside of Asmara, the capital of the now independent Eritrea, enjoying at last a tenuous peace.

If there is a happy ending to this sad saga of art trying to survive internecine strife, it would have to be the new vitality of Addis Ababa following the downfall of the Derg. In 1993 Amha Eshete returned to his homeland after an eighteen-year absence. Although there's no talk yet of a comeback for Amha Records, Eshete's supervision of the Ethiopiques series is not only keeping him busy with tasks such as hunting down the master recordings (many of which were hidden for safekeeping in Greece) and restoring them, it's also at long last giving Ethiopian pop the hearing it deserves.