****** SOUNDS FROM ADDIS ABABA******
‘an ode to the people of Ethiopia’

Addis Ababa, the un-official capital of east-Africa, consists out of an uncountable amount of scents, colours and sounds arising from an extreme diversity of daily human, cultural and religious acts. From the famous and overcrowded ‘Mercato Market’, the biggest market in Africa, where you can buy everything you can think of and more, up to a large amount of churches and mosques that sing consecutively and brotherly together. From the plodding shoe-cleaners, corn-sellers and scale-boys to the palaces from Haile Selassie and the visible growing modern and rich ‘Bole’. All this is glued together by an inimitable cloud of small taxi-vans, served on a big and tasty Injera, that will bring you, in a cosy entanglement with other Addisians, for not more than 20 euro cents all over town.

This plural mix of Ethiopian ingredients is shown the best in the extremely rich and genius Ethiopian music tradition, which embodies the deep respect and knowledge of the ancestors. Traditional (tribal) music from different parts of Ethiopia mixed in the 1970 (this decade is also known as the ‘golden era’ of Ethiopian music and was brutally interrupted by the cruel intervention of the communist regime of the Junta, which lasted for 20 years, leaving a big scar in the Ethiopian society) with other music genres from around the world, leading to what is nowadays known as the ‘Ethio-jazz music’.

My brief but fascinating meeting with the Ethiopian rich culture, and the amazingly friendly Ethiopian people that let me into their lives, lead to this podcast, which consists out of more than 50 live recordings of sounds from the street, interviews and many musical performances. All this together became my ‘Ode to the people of Ethiopia’. I’m thankful for all the great people I met, the music I got to know and the sounds that Addis Ababa presented to me. I will be back Ethiopia, because those sounds are just a first impression, the tip of the iceberg. 


List of ingredients:
00:00: Piazza square
02:00: Hiding from the rain, while having a typical Ethiopian coffee ceremony. 
03:00: ‘Scale-boys’: trying to get your attention.
04:00: Taking one of the small taxi-vans to a concert.
06:00: Concert ‘Addis Acoustic Project’ @ The Coffee House.
08:00: The rainy season by night.
08:30: Addis by night.
09:00: Morning birds.
10:00: Sunday-morning singing and praying from protestant church. Recordings from my room.
12:00: Parts of an interview with Melaku Belay: guardian of the rich and divers Ethiopian cultural tradition, famous Ethiopian dancer (in Holland known from performances with the band The EX) and the mastermind behind the amazing cultural centre ‘Fendika’.
16:00: Nardos Tesfaw @ Fendika
21:00: Tadele Bekele @ Fendika
26:00: Hawa @ Fendika
31:00: Jared Negu @ Fendika
33:00: Sounds from ‘Mercato’: the biggest market from Africa.
34:00: Poem on ‘Mercato Market’ by the greatest poet from Ethiopia: Tsegaye Gabre Medhin.
39:00: Boys with stereos, selling religious tapes to people near the entrance of a big orthodox church.
40:00: Religious praying from Orthodox church.
41:00: Interview with Dr. Mulatu Astatke, the godfather of Ethio-Jazz.
45:00: Dr Mulatu Astatke and the African Jazz Village @ Gion Hotel.
60:00: A small impression from sounds of the countryside from Ethiopia: sounds from the ‘Hamer Tribe’, south-Ethiopia. 




Sounds From Addis Ababa

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