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*2024 stock* Emptiness, melancholy, nostalgia; doom and gloom, morbid musings; heartache or homesickness: such is the stock in trade of the misery and mournful memories expressed by the song Tezeta - Ethiopia's majestic hymn to the blues. Etymologic…
*2024 stock* The Alèmayèhu songs already presented in Ethiopiques 3 and 8 have given a foretaste of this outstanding stylist of Ethiopian pop, a singer as remarkable for his frenetic rock numbers as for his heartrending ballads. By dint of rampant Am…
*2024 stock* In the 1960s there was a Swinging Addis just as there was a Swinging London. In Ethiopia, as in Europe bor the USA, the first generation born after the war made their noisy, colourful breakthrough onto the scene. A veritable cultural rev…
*2024 stock* Erè mèla mèla was the very first record of modern Ethiopian music released in Europe (Crammed Discs, Brussells, 1986). It is only logical that it should be reissued today, expanded and remastered, in the Ethiopiques series. This volum 7 …
*2024 stock* For many years everything we knew about Mahmoud Ahmed (and Ethiopian music in general) was limited to the cult album Erè Mèla Mèla (Ethiopiques 7 CD 829802), recorded in 1975 but released for the first time in Europe in 1986. Mahmoud's f…
*2024 stock* "Tigrigna music" refers to music of Tigray and Eritrea. The majorities in each of these territories share the same language, Tigrigna. Tigrigna music, dominant in Tigray and Eritrea, is quite distinct, both rhythmically and melodically, …
*2024 stock* In the Ethiopian musical world, Mulatu Astatqé is a typical, totaly unique personality, a legend unto himself. For 30 years, he has been an inescapabe presence, a virtual statue casting a long shadow over the Ethiopian scene. His true si…
*2024 stock* The Amha Records label issued approx 250 tracks in six years (1969-1975). 8 songs on this "Ethiopiques 3" CD are accompanied by bands affiliated with the Police. Indeed, until the very end of the 1960s, Ethiopia had no independant modern…
*2024 stock* Originally wandering minstrels, sharp-tongued peddlers who roamed the old Abyssinian countryside, many azmaris more or less settled down after the founding of Addis-Ababa just over a century ago. The cleverest of them quickly understood …
*2024 stock* 1969-1978. The main body of Ethiopian records was produced in less than one decade: all in all, just under 500 45s and around 30 LP albums. Amha Eshèté, creator of the Amha Records Label, was the driving force behind this brief creative …
*2024 stock* Taarab is a genre of music popular in Tanzania and Kenya. It is influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. In the 1970s, a new taarab emerged in the coastal…
Big Tip! *2024 stock* Qawwali is a syncretic musical form of heterodox Islam (the unorthodox doctrines of the Sufis, a group of ascetics and mystics) in South Asia. Derived from the Arabic Qaul (to say, creed, word), the term designates both an India…
*2024 stock* Sahra Halgan is an iconic artist from Somaliland, an independent country since 1991 but not recognized by the international community, formerly a British protectorate in northern Somalia. The granddaughter of a singer and poet, she devot…
*2024 stock* Erwan Keravec's 4th opus devoted to contemporary music, Goebbels/Glass/Radigue features a trio of contemporary music maestros. Evocative, minimal or sensitive, 3 very different ways of imagining music. Heiner Goebbels places the bagpipes…
"My reasons for writing pieces are often very surprising.... Two Pages, you'll recall, is a unison. Someone asked me if I was trying to follow the evolution of music history and if, then, my next piece would follow that logic and be fifths. So I wrot…
*2024 stock* It's quite unusual for me to take on an existing piece. Since I've been interested in contemporary music, I've devoted myself to commissioning new pieces. This time, it's a bit different. I wanted to extend the ringers' quartet into a fo…
The return of the Zanzibara series: a Deep Taarab masterpiece from legendary singer Zuhura Swaleh, recorded in Nairobi in 1981.
Zuhura Swaleh & Party rose to fame on the Mombasa scene in the 1970s
with a new fast-paced taarab style based on local ng…