April 26, 2008, 11:15 am
Filed under: life, music | Tags: jazz, ethiopia, ethiopian music, world music, ethiopiques, very best of ethiopiques
Filed under: life, music | Tags: jazz, ethiopia, ethiopian music, world music, ethiopiques, very best of ethiopiques
Sometimes a record comes along that literally blows your mind.
This is it.
It’s a collection of the Ethiopian club music scene of Addis Ababa circa 1968 - 74. And it’s unique, hypnotic, sexy, trance-like because the rythms are so un-western. Yet it adopts western influences of jazz and soul and meshes them with military precision (many of the artists are from the Ethiopian army bands) and African mystery.
It is actually, to die for. OK, some tracks fail to quite mesh with my westernised ear - but not many.
Unquestionably my album of the year so far.
You can hear more (and read all about) here!
Needless to say, the kids hate it.
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Hi Mark
Thanks for positive words about the Ethiopiques release, and I’m hoping I might be able to wet your whistle for the next site I’ve built.
http://brazilianbeats.info
Its not quite as exotic as Ethiopiques but is still a pleasure to discover.
Best wishes
Timjim (Builder of Nigeria Special)
Comment by Timjim April 30, 2008 @ 1:24 pm[...] is an absolute stonewall classic. This stuff takes your breath away and played back to back with The Very Best of Ethiopiques it shows the quality of music coming out of Northern Africa is nothing short of [...]
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