Best, R.

E/O and Mulatu Astatke, “Munaye” – Mulatu has a new CD coming out, featuring the E/O.  Some fancy tuning at 5:12.

E/O and Mahmoud Ahmed, “Bemen Sebab Letlash”

E/O and Mahmoud Ahmed, “Atawarulegn Lela” – I love this one!

E/O and Mahmoud Ahmed, “Ashkaru”

When we recorded the “EthioGroove” DVD in Paris (April, 2006), we did a second gig at a local club.  I think this footage comes from that gig:

Man, those were great gigs.

Best, R.

• Here
• And Here

And on Youtube, a series of audience videos:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Nifty, eh?

Best, R.

Best, R.

The Lincoln Center gig has been fantastic, insofar as audience footage is concerned.  I already posted a few different videos, but add to that quite a number of outside blog posts, many of which include pictures.  Some of them are:

• A blog post that mentions some of the excellent African music concerts in NYC over the summer.
• A blog post about the horses Saratoga Springs that also includes a 0:41 clip of us at Lincoln Center (”Abet, Abet!”)
• Some wonderful photographs of the Lincoln Center gig.  The shots of Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemayhu Eshete are particularly great.  Oh, and I guess that wasn’t Bill Laswell after all.
• We were reviewed in the New York Times.  But you already knew that.
• Same photos as above, same publisher, but some great comments here.
• A personal fave of mine comes from Brooklyn Vegan, a fantastic blog that has turned me on to tons of great music in the past couple of years.
• The blog at WNYC.org has an excellent video of Mahmoud singing Ere Mela Mela.  I love this song.  Note the audience singing along…
• A thoughtful review of the concert.
• Here’s a fab preview, provided after the concert, from the Village Voice.

I also stumbled across an interesting review of the DVD we did (Either/Orchestra) with Mahmoud Ahmed last year.

There are tons and tons of pix on flickr.

• Here’s the Ethiopiques tag on flickr.  No, not all 289 shots are of us, but a surprisingly large number of them are – that is to say, pages 1 through 6 have a huge number of shots, with nothing else on later pages.
• Here’s the Mahmoud Ahmed tag on flickr.  Again, not all are of us, but many are.
• In particular, I like many of Irene Trudel’s shots.
• Excellent shots from Redheadwalking of our gig in Ireland.  If I am right, this particular photographer had a hell of a vantage point: she sat on stage for most of the show.
• And last, but not least (check out picasa too!), my favorite shot of the Lincoln Center concert, courtesy Heartonastrick (via Flickr):

Ethiopiques at Lincoln Center

Enjoy, R.

Last Thursday, just before I left for Logan Airport, I managed to post something about our Lincoln Center gig.  Again, it was unbelievable, and deeply gratifying.  It turns out that Nate Chinen (excellent music journalist at the New York Times) thought it was pretty great too.  On Friday, the NY Times published his review of the concert.  It is here.

And much to my surprise, there are four additional videos of our concert on Youtube.  Let’s watch them together (I haven’t even seen them yet, I’m just posting first, listening later).

Here is the first one.  Starts with Addis Ababa Bete (”Addis Ababa is my home” – about a beautiful girl in “my” neighborhood):

The second one starts with Alemayhu’s rock tune ”Mekeshyn Selawq”:

Up third in Youtube land is Mahmoud Ahmed with “Atawurlegn Lela.”  I asked him about this tune yesterday at breakfast and he said that the lyrics – “Atawurlegn lela, Keswa zena beker” – mean something like “I don’t want to hear any news about her.”  Apparently, it’s another tale of heartbreak:

Lastly, my all-time favorite Mahmoud Ahmed song, “Ere Mela Mela.”  This was so powerful on this gig, and to have a huge crowd of fans singing along is something from another planet (or at least, another country!):

Again, excellent camera angle…

Best, R.