a gift.

so it's taken me a while to post this gem of the hidden temple for a myriad of reasons. mainly as to the confusion surrounding this guy on my part. there is very very little about him other than a couple of you/ethiotube videos, where they list him as wasse kassa, but on the cd & one other place (which is also a mention of this cd in some radio playlist) they have him listed as wase kasa. finally i decided to just keep it the same as the artwork. if you'd like to change it after you download it, i don't fucking care. just download this. yr going to thank me, you really will. more in line with the modern ethiopian sound of joyous casio keyboard lines on top of drum machine beats. he also has a beautiful voice, & the songs are instantly memorable. i'm 99.9% certain that you can't download this anywhere else in the wastelands, so enjoy amigos.

tl;dr jammin' ethiopian shit from the nineties that is rare rare rare.

ps not a shitty scan of cover on my part. that is just how the cover looks.

Ivory heavens

Hey amigos. I put a good effort on my first post of the year to be special, hence the delay. And as jefe has been presenting us with such good music stuffs, I was able to do it at a calm pace.

Many people gladly have been introduced to Ethiopian music, directly or indirectly, by Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, while restricted, however, to the Ethio-jazz legends, like Mulatu Astatke and Mahmoud Ahmed -- the Éthiopiques collection has about 20 volumes, still counting. And while have listened only a couple of them, I figure this one is probably one of the most surprising.

Before Tsegué-Maryam (emahoy is "nun" for Amharic), only Monk was able to keep me hooked on (non-classical) solo piano pieces. They both bear, IMO, a rare talent for adding that extra colour between the black and white keys. A rather pleasant way to start the year, enjoy!

ps. If you please, contribute to the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation.

pw: spooked