The 7 best Ethio-Jazz tracks of all time
Ethio-Jazz
Mulatu Astatke's invention: Ethiopian pentatonic modes and Amharic song set against soul-jazz arrangements, made in Addis Ababa in the years before the 1974 revolution closed the clubs and the studios.
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Mulatu Astatke / Yèkèrmo Sèw
A vibraphone, a fuzz guitar and a mode that refuses to resolve. Jim Jarmusch later used it in Broken Flowers and introduced the whole tradition to a generation who had never heard of Addis.
Mahmoud Ahmed / Ere Mela Mela
Recorded with the Ibex Band as the political weather turned. Ahmed sings with an ornamentation that has no equivalent in soul, over a band that is unmistakably playing soul.
Mulatu Astatke / Tezeta
Tezeta is both a mode and a word for nostalgia, which tells you how the two are related here. The most purely beautiful thing in the Ethiopiques series.
Mulatu Astatke / Yègellé Tezeta
The organ line is the hook and the bass never settles. Astatke's own tezeta, and the one most often lifted by hip-hop producers who found the reissues.
Girma Bèyènè and the Walias Band / Musicawi Silt
A riff so strong it became the standard every Addis band had to play. Rhythmically closer to Lagos than to New York, which is the point.
Tlahoun Gèssèssè / Almaz
The great male voice of the era, backed by the Imperial Bodyguard Band — literally a state orchestra playing dance music. The scene's institutional strangeness in one record.
Alèmayèhu Eshèté / Heyweté
Ethiopia's answer to James Brown, and not much interested in being dignified. Proof the scene had range beyond Astatke's cool.