Dawit Yifru, self-titled, Ethiopia, Muzikawi, vinyl LP (2023)
This compilation of songs performed by keyboardist Dawit Yifru and several other musicians of his Dahlak Band casts a spotlight on the popular music scene in Ethiopia in the 1970s, when Yifru himself was making a name as a talented musician, composer and music arranger. All tracks were collected from various cassettes released in the 1970s and restored and remastered. They feature music styles popular in Ethiopia and other parts of the world in that decade, along with ideas and other unusual inspirations (including the use of violins) that Yifru had.
As all the music featured here is instrumental, it’s possible to listen to the entire album straight through as a continuous soundtrack to an imaginary film with cinematography that emphasises a wide and bewildering range of bleached colours to match a spy thriller narrative set in an exotic locale. The musicians may well be performing in a lounge set in a spacecraft orbiting Earth, with strobe lights flashing in psychedelic colours around them, and audiences milling about sipping colourful cocktails bedecked with flamboyant garnishes. What really catches your attention though is the melodies themselves: they are recognisably Ethiopian jazz pieces from the 1960s / 70s but they have a flavour and atmosphere all their own. The tone is rich and heady, redolent of wistful and melancholy nostalgia for a time long gone and unlikely ever to be recreated. On some tracks like “Yene Alem”, the music is beautiful, serene and gentle, and even seems to have a spiritual aspect.
The vinyl LP version presents eight tracks that vary from each other considerably though some of the tracks in the second half of the album tend to be very busy and repetitive, and are not all that different from each other in the way they push ahead with a mind all their own, leaving audiences in the dust without a hook they can grasp to try to keep up. However these tracks are still very beguiling in their melodies and tones, and you can end up completely absorbed in them.
This recording really does grow on you the more you play it, and you will find yourself longing for that very world where this music originally hails from, even if you were born long after that world receded into history and all that is left of it is people’s own fading memories and perceptions of it being better or different from what it actually was.