Ayalew Mesfin Hasabe - My Worries

Ayalew Mesfin is among the legends of the 1970s Ethiopian musical scene – his music is some of the funkiest to arise from this unconquerable East African nation. Ayalew was forced underground by the Derg regime that took control of the country in 1974. Now, over 40 years later, his triumphant return – and the first time that his music has been presented in album form – gives us a chance to discover a rare & beautiful moment in music history.
For many who are now discovering this album and Ayalew Mesfin, the music created in 1970s Ethiopia will sound both familiar and alien: while the trappings of ’70s Ethiopian music carry some aspects that those in the West will easily identify with—trap drum kits, jazz big-band styled horn sections, guitars played through wah wah and fuzz pedals—the Ethiopian style of singing, and the modes in which the musicians move, may confound. Perhaps some who have delved into the instrumental Ethio-Jazz of Mulatu Astatke—a well-known Ethiopian musical export, relatively unknown in his homeland—will have a context in which to engage this, presumably the last great, unheard catalog of ’70s Ethiopian music. The music he created with his Black Lion Band is amongst the funkiest to arise from Addis Ababa; his recording career, captured in nearly two dozen 7” singles and numerous reel-to-reel tapes, shows the strata of the most fertile decade in Ethiopia’s 20th century recording industry, when records were pressed constantly by both independent upstarts and corporate behemoths, even if they were only distributed within the confines of this unconquerable East African nation. To date, only four of Mesfin’s songs have been reissued, as part of Francis Falcetto’s Ethiopiques series: This is the first anthology of his music, and the first time he has involved himself in the process.
Ethiopians celebrate an ancient history and civilization, a culture in line with those from the earliest epochs of human history. Ethiopia’s architecture stands alongside that of ancient China and Egypt. Strategically located in the eastern part of the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia maintained close connections with African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and European countries for millennia, through which it fostered the introduction of some of the major religions in the world—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—to many parts of Africa. Shaped by these historic, geographic and religious processes over centuries, diverse Ethiopian musical traditions emerged.
Claiming to be descendants of King Solomon of Israel and the Queen of Sheba, Ethiopian emperors presented themselves as legitimate rulers of the land from the 10th century until 1974, when revolutionary forces known as the Derg overthrew Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie I. Still, “Ethiopia” as a concept carries ideological resonance for many Africans and many in the African diaspora, as a representation of the African continent as a whole, and for its sovereignty. Ethiopia is the only country on the continent never to be colonized, and it vanquished invading Italians not once, but twice. Not surprisingly, modernizing the Ethiopian state vis-à-vis Eastern ideals has been a major challenge.