African Music Forum
Since the 80s, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (born in Addis Ababa in 1923) has been living quietly in a small cell of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem (the Debre Genet or “Sanctuary of Paradise” monastery on Ethiopia Street), between God and her piano, after a life shaped by exile, both political and self imposed.
“Lost” album, from 1984 (African Heritage Records), will be re-released en of July by Frederiksberg Records (vinyl and digital).
Bandcamp
Sons of Ethiopia is a fascinating piece of the Ethiopian musical puzzle. Emerging from the community of Ethiopian exiles who had been scattered to the winds by the brutality of the Derg – the military dictatorship that had deposed Haile Selassie – the album was the sound of a new generation. The members of Admas were not musicians from the so-called ‘golden age’: they were children of the terror and propaganda of the Derg time – an era of state-sponsored neighbourhood bands and a propaganda-tinged traditional music scene, where the weekends were sound-tracked by the remaining hotel groups of a bygone Imperial world.
| Anchi Bale Game |
| Bahta’s Highlife |
| Tez Alegn Yetintu |
| Kalatashew Waga |
| Wed Enate |
| Samba Shegitu |
| Astawesalehu |