Enjoy the Selected Musics
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Leza Awards recognise Ethiopian talent | eNCA
Africa
Monday 7 October 2013 - 5:40pm
ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopians were on the edge of their seats at this year’s Leza Awards in Addis Ababa.
The awards recognise achievers in the performing arts, including musicians, actors and producers.
Actor Samson Tadesse Baby was delighted as he walked away with the best actor award for his role in the film Ameran.
“I think we did a very good job as a team and that is why the audience gave their vote because the film received a very good reception among the audience,” he said.
The awards also highlighted the talents of up-and-coming stars.
“I am really happy. Recognition like this is the only way you can prove that your work is going very well. I know a lot of people listened to my album but this is my proof,” said Michael Belayneh, winner of best album of the year.
Many in the audience are optimistic that the Leza Awards are a stepping stone to greater things.
They might just allow winners to take on the giants of Hollywood.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Ethiopia - The Young Ethio Jazz Band, ages 10 to 15, bring back traditio...
It's a truth universally acknowledged that kids hate their parents' music, or at least do their best to ignore it. Garage bands don't borrow CDs from their parents so they can practice disco covers.
Okay, maybe, but only in some kind of ironic hipster way.
Well there's nothing ironic about the music being played in this suburban garage near Oakland, California. The Young Ethio Jazz Band are teenagers who rock out with their parents' music.
The band played its first gig in San Francisco last winter. Now it is slated to open for another act at Yoshi's, a famous jazz club in San Francisco, and then it plays in the Ethiopian Heritage Festival at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
All of the kids are second generation Ethiopians between 11 and 16-years-old. Before they started playing together a year and a half ago, most of them had the stereotypical reaction to their parents' music.
"In the very beginning I was really confused about the music," says Yohanas Abanew, who plays keyboard in the band. "I just said 'well this doesn't really sound like music that I would really want to play.'"
Then he started practicing an Ethio-jazz song in his high school band. "It really woke me up," he says, "this is my culture, and I really need to learn this music."
Yonathan Wolday had a similar revelation. He's a tall, lanky 16-year-old who plays trumpet. Wolday is wearing a gray sweatshirt with a picture of a diamond and the letters "DMND." A pair of white ear phones hang out from his collar and onto his chest.
His parents are from Ethiopia, and the songs they listen to are in Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia. Wolday doesn't understand it well, and that initially turned him off from the music. He didn't really start listening to the songs until he began playing in the band.
Even now, it's hard to believe that he's channeling the music of his parents' generation. Whenever the band stops practicing, you can hear simple rap bass lines pulsating out from his dangling ear buds.
Vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke gave birth to Ethio-jazz in the early 70s. He was the first African student to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. There he fused Western jazz with Latin rhythms and traditional Ethiopian scales.
If you watched the movie "Broken Flowers" you may have one of his songs stuck in your head. The score features several Astatke compositions, including this one, Yekeramo Sew.
Mulatu Astatke and Ethio-jazz have had a bit of a resurgence in the US since "Broken Flowers" came out in 2005. Still, it's hard to find sheet music and transcribed parts for many Ethio-jazz songs.
So, instead of relying on charts, the Young Ethio Jazz Band is learning the music the old fashion way — by ear. Their accuracy is astonishing. At moments they sound almost identical to Astatke's recordings.
Sirak Tegbaru brought the band together. He invited the kids to practice in his garage after hearing them play at a nearby church. Even he is impressed with how well the kids have internalized the music.
"These kids really just want to play it the way it's been played," Tegbaru says. Sometimes he has to encourage them to branch out—play some different scales, improvise their own solos over the chord changes. Make the kids break the rules.
Tegbaru left Ethiopia in 1979 when he was 16. He loved playing music, but his parents said it wasn't practical. They pressured him to study medicine, and sent him abroad to Prague. Tegbaru still plays music, but he doesn't have anything to do with medicine. He sells State Farm insurance during the week. On the weekend, he leads the band.
"I feel like I am reborn again through these kids," he says. The kids they glow when they play this song. They smile on their face. They're happy and moving around. That means they really have that feeling. They're playing from the bottom of the heart. And that's, that's music."
Click here to download music and see video.
Okay, maybe, but only in some kind of ironic hipster way.
Addis Getahun, a member of the Young Ethio Jazz Band, based in California. (Photo: Noam Eshel)
Well there's nothing ironic about the music being played in this suburban garage near Oakland, California. The Young Ethio Jazz Band are teenagers who rock out with their parents' music.
The band played its first gig in San Francisco last winter. Now it is slated to open for another act at Yoshi's, a famous jazz club in San Francisco, and then it plays in the Ethiopian Heritage Festival at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
All of the kids are second generation Ethiopians between 11 and 16-years-old. Before they started playing together a year and a half ago, most of them had the stereotypical reaction to their parents' music.
"In the very beginning I was really confused about the music," says Yohanas Abanew, who plays keyboard in the band. "I just said 'well this doesn't really sound like music that I would really want to play.'"
Then he started practicing an Ethio-jazz song in his high school band. "It really woke me up," he says, "this is my culture, and I really need to learn this music."
Yonathan Wolday had a similar revelation. He's a tall, lanky 16-year-old who plays trumpet. Wolday is wearing a gray sweatshirt with a picture of a diamond and the letters "DMND." A pair of white ear phones hang out from his collar and onto his chest.
His parents are from Ethiopia, and the songs they listen to are in Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia. Wolday doesn't understand it well, and that initially turned him off from the music. He didn't really start listening to the songs until he began playing in the band.
Even now, it's hard to believe that he's channeling the music of his parents' generation. Whenever the band stops practicing, you can hear simple rap bass lines pulsating out from his dangling ear buds.
Vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke gave birth to Ethio-jazz in the early 70s. He was the first African student to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. There he fused Western jazz with Latin rhythms and traditional Ethiopian scales.
If you watched the movie "Broken Flowers" you may have one of his songs stuck in your head. The score features several Astatke compositions, including this one, Yekeramo Sew.
Mulatu Astatke and Ethio-jazz have had a bit of a resurgence in the US since "Broken Flowers" came out in 2005. Still, it's hard to find sheet music and transcribed parts for many Ethio-jazz songs.
So, instead of relying on charts, the Young Ethio Jazz Band is learning the music the old fashion way — by ear. Their accuracy is astonishing. At moments they sound almost identical to Astatke's recordings.
Sirak Tegbaru brought the band together. He invited the kids to practice in his garage after hearing them play at a nearby church. Even he is impressed with how well the kids have internalized the music.
"These kids really just want to play it the way it's been played," Tegbaru says. Sometimes he has to encourage them to branch out—play some different scales, improvise their own solos over the chord changes. Make the kids break the rules.
Tegbaru left Ethiopia in 1979 when he was 16. He loved playing music, but his parents said it wasn't practical. They pressured him to study medicine, and sent him abroad to Prague. Tegbaru still plays music, but he doesn't have anything to do with medicine. He sells State Farm insurance during the week. On the weekend, he leads the band.
"I feel like I am reborn again through these kids," he says. The kids they glow when they play this song. They smile on their face. They're happy and moving around. That means they really have that feeling. They're playing from the bottom of the heart. And that's, that's music."
Click here to download music and see video.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Ester Rada's Latest Work Signifies Full Embrace of Ethiopian Roots
Ester Rada's parent's had to flee from Ethiopia when famine struck the country in 1983. They travelled to Israel and became citizens there.
A year after they settled in Kiryat Arba, Ester was born. They lived in a volatile Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Hebron in the West Bank. The family stayed there until Rada was 10. Slowly and steadily, as she grew up she was distanced from Ethiopian culture.
Though she was born and brought up in Israel, her looks separated her from other Israelis. To get rid of feeling different, she went for singing. She became singer in the military band. After completing military duties, she moved to Tel Aviv and became actress.
Recently, she released her four song EP titled `Life Happens'. It comprises of Ethio Jazz riffs and other soulful stylings. It is said that her latest work explains itself for her being embraced in Ethiopian roots though self-acceptance was tough for her.
She says that her mother tells that she could speak Ethiopian language very fluently until she was six years of age. "I wanted to be an Israeli. Only when I grew up, after the army I think, that's when I felt whole with all of the pieces in me", explains Rada.
"
'via Blog this'
Friday, May 17, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
In Ethiopia "There Comes A Time, When We Heed A Certain Call..." ♫ Blogs at theMusic.com.au
KRIS SWALES
THERE COMES A TIME, WHEN WE HEED A CERTAIN CALL...
If you were to sum up my life with a Hall & Oates song right now, it'd be Out Of Touch. I'm bang on six weeks into a stint of overseas travel, comfortably ensconced in my own life's travails and not much else since somewhere around Day Five.
As far as world events go, I know that Margaret Thatcher died, Christopher Pyne wants to rebrand Australian History text books as the White Pages, Terry Campese is finally back from a knee injury for the Canberra Raiders, and Daft Punk weren't really trolling the world when they announced that their new album would be launched in Wee Waa. (Though Human After All was surely a troll, right guys?)
As for music + finger + pulse? Forget about it. I slept on the release of Underworld frontman Karl Hyde's (actually quite decent) solo album by a week - unthinkable in the real world. Then I lost my iPhone (Contents: 149 albums, including more Fiona Apple and Todd Rundgren than can possibly be good for you) in a crowd surge at a football match in Casablanca, so it's now just me and my internal monologue. Terrifying stuff, I assure you.
There is a point here, and it begins in Africa - Ethiopia, to be precise. After interviewing refugees from Eritrea and Sudan at a Swiss asylum seeker centre a couple of years back, I got it in my head that I wanted to see the places these people had fled from. Given the Smart Traveller website had them on the Do Not Travel list when the time came, and bordering Ethiopia offered a visa on arrival, it seemed the next logical choice.
Disclosure: my knowledge of the country before landing didn't go far beyond South Park's Starvin' Marvin and the tattered 45 of We Are The World that I've had in my collection since 1985.
That clip had a profound effect on me as a seven-year-old burgeoning music nerd, trying to ID all of the singers whenever it screened on TV. And footage of starving Ethiopian children, my age and younger, was a staple part of the evening news diet for months before and many months after. It was probably the first time I became aware that not everywhere was like Australia, and that life in green, leafy Woodridge was actually pretty damn sweet.
I landed in Addis Ababa with a vague plan of finding rappers or street artists who were born during the famines of the '80s; to ask them how that had influenced their work. Vague plan, sadly, was a little too vague.
What I did find, however, was a super-educated middle class living in a city with new buildings spewing out of the ground everywhere you turn, and abject poverty never far from view.
I also found the green, leafy substance known as chat.
My first encounter occurred in the passenger seat of a mini-bus making its way south from Gonder, 550km north of Addis, to the lakeside town of Bahir Dar. At one of our last stops, a tout with terrible teeth tried to sell me a bag of said substance, helpfully informing me that it was "food". The driver shook his head: "Drug."
This, of course, was the same driver who an hour earlier had been picking the stems off the very same leaves before chewing on them. Considering that in a previous life I'd held the steering wheel from the passenger side while my driver pulled bongs on the Toowoomba to Brisbane run, I still felt I was in the safe hands of a trained professional.
A chat crop being tended next door to a heritage-listed 17th century monastery.
The next day, I was schlepping around the Blue Nile Falls area under the harsh midday sun and quizzed my guide, Kassa, about the chat crops we walked through.
The way he described its effects, I can only conclude that chat is the trucker's speed of Ethiopia, with trace elements of cocaine for good measure. It makes you more confident; it makes you sweat; it's useful for studying and slimming; it makes you want to drink your bodyweight in beer and dribble bullshit with your friends.
It also makes you think about God too much if you take a lot, which is one of the reasons why the forty-something Kassa hung up his chatting boots. He got that same slightly wistful, slightly haunted look talking about getting on the chat as I do when I recall my long distant days of getting on the chomp.
Solidarity brother - what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Eventually.
Given the size of nearby Lake Tana, which feeds into the Blue Nile Falls, and the general richness of the farmland in the area, I asked Kassa about the famines in the 1980s - specifically, whether this area was hit hard as well. He says it wasn't, and that they were lucky, but that many people made the pilgrimage here by foot from the drought-stricken areas to the north.
He was only a boy when it happened, but remembers it well. Impossibly skinny people dropping dead as they walked. Left to rot where they fell because their families had no means of giving them a proper burial. Carrion birds feasting on the remains. Some of the refugees couldn't see when they arrived, blinded by the desert heat, and even when fed and watered they didn't survive.
Kassa's family took three children into their straw and mud brick home, where they stayed for a year until foreign aid money finally arrived and conditions in the north had improved. It was in his family's Christian nature to help, he said. "If I had three shirts, I'd give away two."
All of this was delivered with the same fire that we'd have talking about a defining life moment, like finally getting the girl or being at the ground when our team won the premiership. Then he stopped suddenly, laid down a thousand mile stare for a few seconds, said "come on", and motioned for us to continue.
Three days later, I was lunching in a seafood restaurant just north of Tangier, looking across the Mediterranean as storm clouds gathered over the Rock of Gibraltar. In one of those coincidences that you probably think writers make up because it's convenient (Disclaimer: I'm totally not making this up), the restaurant's playlist jumped from Elton John's Sacrifice to George Michael's Faith... to We Are The World.
After that reminder from The Universe that I'm not just an arsehole, but an extremely lucky one, I forced down every last piece of pasta in my oversized bowl.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
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