|
contents | jazz | |||||||||||||
| Buda Musique Releases Ethiopiques Volume 20 In the rich, varied and bizarre history of African music, the tragedy of the Ethiopian pop recording industry stands alone. Today, Buda Musique brings us the éthiopiques series, showcasing the immense scope of the golden age of Ethiopian music – lovingly assembled, re-mastered and fully annotated. The éthiopiques series has received gushing accolades from an endless list of magazines, newspapers and radio stations – and numbers everyone from Elvis Costello and John Zorn to Rocket From The Crypt among its fans. Series curator Francis Falceto writes in the program notes to éthiopiques 20, “One of the most gratifying phenomena linked to the publication of éthiopiques is the sort of second life that vintage Ethiopian music is enjoying, not only among music lovers in search of inspired sounds, but also among many non-Ethiopian musicians, on nearly all continents...the originality, fidelity and enthusiasm of their interest is a pleasure to behold.” Live in Addis represents this trend, if it can be so called, as it is the first entry in the series with a primarily non-Ethiopian group. The Either/Orchestra is among the longest running and highly respected large ensembles in jazz. Since 1985, under the direction of leader & saxophonist/composer Russ Gershon, the ten-piece has traversed the length and breadth of jazz to make unexpected connections between styles and approaches to music, including Ethiopian music and jazz. In 1994, Gershon heard the first of Falceto’s compilations, Ethiopian Groove (reissued as éthiopiques 13). Within a couple of years, Gershon, a Grammy-nominated arranger, began adding Ethiopian songs to the ten-piece ensemble’s already eclectic repertoire. This material became the hit of the E/O’s set and led to contact with Falceto. In 2004, Falceto arranged for an invitation to the E/O to perform at the Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa – this would be the first U.S. big band performance in Ethiopia since Duke Ellington in 1973. In Addis, the Either Orchestra invited locals Mulatu Astatke (éthiopiques 4), Getachew Mekurya (éthiopiques 14), Bahta Gebre-Heywet (éthiopiques 8) to join them on stage at the Ethiopian Music Festival. E/O wowed music fans with their contemporary interpretations of familiar, popular tunes. In September 2005, Buda Musique will release éthiopiques 20, a double CD set containing the music performed at that memorable concert. Mulatu Astatke studied in London, Boston and New York in the late 1950s and returned home to invent ethio-jazz, which stands with various South African and Nigerian styles as the most successful fusion of jazz and African music. Upon his return to Ethiopia in the late sixties he was hailed as "the first-Ethiopian-musician-educated-abroad" and as an arranger/bandleader he was unequalled. On piano, organ, vibes and percussion, with his arrangements and compositions, and as an agent provocateur, he became a pivotal figure in a great era of Ethiopian pop and jazz. To this day, he remains a ubiquitous presence in the Ethiopian music scene, as club owner, music school founder, radio DJ, composer, arranger and instrumentalist. In his concept of bringing together the many different traditional musics of Ethiopia with music from America, he was pioneer of the kind of international mixing which has become an important current in modern music. Mulatu Astatke's classic early recordings, reissued on éthiopiques volume #4, can currently be heard in the Jim Jarmusch independent film, Broken Flowers featuring Bill Murray, Jessica Lange and Sharon Stone. The movie took the Grand Prix award at Cannes and made its debut in the U.S. in July 2005. Buda Musique and the éthiopiques series are distributed in North America by Allegro Corporation. Founded in 1982, Allegro Corporation’s catalogue has grown to cover a broad range of music and entertainment products, which includes rock, alternative, classical, pop, world, jazz, new age and blues. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |