*** Thiopiques 8

SWINGING ADDIS 1969 - 1974

(Buda Musique)

In the late '60s, Addis Ababa boasted a great nightclub scene. Emperor Haille Selassie was still in power, and though coups, civil war, and famine lay ahead, for a period the town was swinging to music that fused tripping local rhythms and fluttering vocal melodies to the brash stylings of imported soul, mambo, boogie-woogie, and rock and roll.

The 21 short tracks on Swinging Addis offer one odd delight after another from that era. Mahmoud Ahmed sings in an Amharic laden with lightning-quick vocal ornamentations, but there's no mistaking that he's a soul man. The James Brown borrowings are more blatant still on "Tchero adari nègn," a 1970 track by Alèmeyèhu Eshèté, who contributes six tunes to this collection. Lèmma Dèmissèw hews closer to Elvis on "Astawesalèhu," which features baritone sax, honky-tonk piano, and Dèmissèw's lovely East African croon. With swooning horn sections, swaggering vocalists, and quirky, energetic arrangements, singles like these may be the greatest cultural artifacts of the Selassie regime. The brutal ideologues who succeeded the emperor in 1974 closed down Ethiopia's promising pop-music industry virtually overnight, driving talent either abroad or underground.

-- Banning Eyre