Éthiopiques 30: Mistakes on Purpose

For the better part of 20 years, Buda’s Éthiopiques releases have been the go-to series for Ethio-jazz and traditional music from Ethiopia. You won’t find that here. Éthiopiques 30 covers a wide range of styles, from cheesy country ballads to slinky rock, from smooth and groovy soul to hard funk and, OK, maybe a little bit of jazz. All of it, though, is dripping in that classic Ethiopian sound.

Crooner Girma Bèyènè was a star in the ‘Swinging Addis’ period of the 70s, but recorded very little of his own music – it was his compositions and arrangements that gained more notoriety. After being off-the-radar, living in the US for 25 years, he slowly made his way back onto the Addis music scene, and in 2015 he was invited to play with French collective Akalé Wubé – it became obvious then that a recording was necessary. Bèyènè and Akalé Wubé have recreated and reimagined the songs from the singer’s golden era, along with one Akalé Wubé original, the instrumental ‘For Amha’.

Bèyènè’s age-worn voice and evocative spoken-word passages add extra emotional dimensions to his classics, while Akalé Wubé’s arrangements are sometimes sleek, sometimes raucous. This album is immaculately cool.