City Scenes is a new feature on Ara City Radio. Every Thursday we will be focusing on the musical legacy of a different city, looking at some of the most famous musicians from that city and listening to some of the music that is being made in it today. We´ll be going through the Alphabet from A-Z and this week we begin with Addis Ababa.
Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia, a country in Eastern Africa that in recent years has been troubled by a devastating civil war but which has a huge musical history.
To focus our journey through the musical legacy of the city, Tom focused on one particular style of music known as Ethio-Jazz, A genre that brings together elements of western Jazz with traditional Ethiopian scales and melodies, that is widely credited as being created by a musician called Mulatu Astatke.
Mulatu Astakte studied music in London and Berklee in the 1950s and 60s before returning to Addis Ababa where he began to fuse the introduce western instruments, rhythms and techniques to the traditional music of his homeland. He called this new style Ethio-Jazz.
Addis Ababa of the 1970s was a vibrant and exciting city with a busy nightlife. Bands´led by Mulatu Astatke and other famous musicians such as Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemeyahu Eshete performed in teh cities many nightclubs and Jazz Bars every night of the week.
Unfortunately this all came to a sudden and unnatural end when a military dictatorship known as the Derg held a coup and deposed the Emperor Haile Selassie in 1975. The put a sharp halt to nightlife and subdued the music scene in Addis Ababa stifling the city´s flourishing creativity.
It wasnt until the end of the dictatorship in 1987 when music was given a chance to resurface. New musicians stepped forward and the legends of the ethio Jazz scene returned to playing live. This ushered in a new golden era for Ethio-Jazz in the 1990s where musicians such as Samuel Yirga picked up the mantel and took the genre in new directions.
These days, Ethio-Jazz still holds an influence on the pop music being made in Addis Ababa. This can be heard in the music of musicians like Yohannes Alemu.
While the country still remains troubled, pop music serves as a tool for artists to push democratic and social causes, as is the case with the music of Tedy Afro, one of the countries biggest modern-day pop-stars.
I would like to thank Solomon, for helping me out with my research for this installment of City Sounds. We will be back next week for B and we´re looking at Bristol.