There’s a deep and wondrously strange paradox around much of the popular music made in Ethiopia in the 1970s. On the one hand, it’s instantly recognisable as being a product of its time and place. Drawing on contemporaneous genres of Black American music including soul, funk and jazz, it was the sound of innovative and pioneering bands such as The Equators, honing a new, home-grown vibe. But through incorporating ancient, traditional Ethiopian scales and melodies, these musicians also forged an aesthetic that seemed – and still sounds – mythically timeless, almost eternal.
Tenor saxophonist Tilaye Gebre was a key architect of that sound. A founder member of The Equators and their successor Dahlak Band, he accompanied and arranged a Who’s Who of Ethiopian vocalists like Mahmoud Ahmed and Aster Aweke. These glorious late 70s instrumental tracks attest that all the while, he was continuing to break new ground. Two reggae-influenced numbers on this LP present an intoxicating, street-level bounce, like the Wailers heard through a dreamily soporific filter. There are languid, narcotized soul tunes with rich horn parts. And there’s an excursion into the dark, minor-key Ethio-jazz popularised by keyboardist Mulatu Astatke.
