The last concert at the Alliance in Addis

We spent most of our last day on the grounds of the Alliance Francaise in Addis.  We had been really well received by all the team at the Alliance, especially Charles and Beatrice who went out of their way a couple of times to help us out with whatever logistical problem had.  There was an art fair organised on the grounds of the Alliance all day on Saturday and it was a nice way to spend a last (beautifully sunny) day before our night-time flights back to France.

It was another magical outdoor concert, and all the work and rehearsals paid off.  Asrat, Mihret and Fekerte performed beautifully and we had a great time playing this last concert.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to hang around much after the concert (we had a plane to catch in less than 2 hours).  All our friends were there and it was sad to say goodbye to everyone.  We packed our stuff, waved au revoir to Addis and headed to the airport.

And I mean au revoir in its literal sense, “to see you again”, because this is not the last time Akalé Wubé are visiting Addis and Ethiopia...we had a good first dose and will be ready to come back very soon!!

Fendika

Friday was the club gig we had al been looking forward to.  We were programmed to play at Melaku’s Fendika, together with Ethio-Colour.  By the time we were ready to go on stage, the small club was packed with people, inside and outside.

I had been visiting the club practically every day since my arrival in Addis.  There is something magical that made us want to go back again and again.  Maybe it was the delicious haraké served in tiny glasses or the fantastic music played incessantly by Asrat and the reisdent Masinko players.  It could have been Mihret’s charismatic bursts of singing, or even Melaku and his troupe’s hypnotic dancing... It could have even been the place itself, a small low tent like space with small stools and tables all over, all bathed in a low red light which makes you exit Addis’ urban wannabe feel into a time forgotten space where all that matters is drink, dance and song.

Fendika is truly a perfect mix of all that makes a great club, and we were honoured to play there on Friday.  People swarmed into the place for the night’s events and it turned out to be a long night of hot music, thanks to Kidus’ vinyl warmup, Ethio-Colour’s amazing show of music, dance and fantastic guest singers, and of course our set which for the first time included Asrat on percussion, Mihret’s singing and Fekerte’s energetic dancing.

The festivities ended with a jam session between us, the musicians of Ethio-Colour and a couple of talented drummers and singers who joined in from the crowd.  It was another memorable night in Addis.

Wal African Jazz Village

We played a good concert at “A la Votre” on Tuesday (which went well except for David’s “roadside salad” incident earlier on in the day, which obliged him to skip the encore and spend a good while visiting the toilets at the club and later at the hotel...) and we had a couple of days off to prepare our last concerts on Friday and Saturday.

We took the opportunity to meet up again with Mulatu Astatke who was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the “Wal African Jazz VIllage”, his music school which resembles more a performing arts centre, not completely finished but with enormous potential for the city’s cultural future.  He showed us through the various classrooms, rehearsal rooms, a huge amphitheater and a beautifully sounding old cinema which Mulatu claimed he’d convert into a fully functional concert venue.

We parted after the obligatory photo shoot of him and his car “Lucy”, and we were only too happy to hear that he had listened to our CD and that he had loved the music, that it was, in his opinion (of course) “beautiful fusion”!

Rehearsals

After our return from Dire Daoua, we had 3 more gigs to look forward to before returning back to Paris.

We had rehearsals planned with Asrat, Mihret and Fekerte during the day, and by Friday we were ready to play a few songs together.  This meeting between us and these talented Ethiopian artists has proven to be fruitful and we were all satisfied with the result.  We met up without really knowing where this collaboration would take us, and as all good collaborations go, we quickly settled into 3 songs (a traditional tune they taught us called Aynama (I hope I spelt this right), and 2 songs of ours which suited the Ethiopians most).  We learnt from each other, discussed and shared ideas, and the resulting concert was rewarding for us as well as for the audience listening.

We managed to achieve one of the biggest objectives of our Ethiopian venture and look forward to continuing this collaboration either in France or again in Ethiopia!

Dire Dawa

 Samedi, c'est notre journée marathon : Nous enchaînons la répétition avec Asrat, Fekherta, Meirat (percussionniste, danseuse et chanteuse ), puis la balance et la répétition au Guramylé devant un public surchauffé. A deux heures du matin, nous rentrons dormir une heure à l'hotel puis il faut se dépêcher d'aller prendre le car pour Dire Dawa !
 
      Nous chargeons le matériel dans les soutes et commençons à somnoler sur les sièges du "Sky Bus". Au moment de partir, le chauffeur nous fait descendre d'urgence : nous sommes dans le mauvais bus. Le chauffeur du Addis-Dire Dawa est malade et un remplaçant arrive.Il faut ressortir et attendre  une bonne heure dans le froid . A Addis à cinq heures du matin, il fait 10 degrés. Nous battons de la semelle au milieu de la place centrale, envahie par les coureurs qui s'entraînent dans le seul parc de la ville. Enfin, le bus arrive, nous partons.
    Pour rattraper le retard, le chauffeur roule à 120 sur une route étroite constamment traversée par des animaux et des gens. Il joue du klaxon et parfois pile brutalement ou fait un écart. Les vieux haut-parleurs crachent une variété lancinante qui nous empêche de dormir. C'est là que Pierre, notre ingé son, a une idée billante : il sort son "Leather Man" et dévisse la trappe pour débrancher le haut parleur du fond.
 
- " ouf, on va pouvoir s'écrouler un peu"
 
    Nous sombrons dans un sommeil comateux entrecoupé par des visions furtives de paysages magnifiques et d' animaux exotiques. Les dix heures de trajet passent à toute vitesse.
 
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    La ville de Dire Dawa est magnifique. Enfin, il fait chaud ! Dans le joli cadre de l'Alliance, un ancien QG des chemins de fer qui ressemble à un préau d'école, nous sommes reçus par Vincent, le directeur adjoint de l'Alliance. Pierre fait des miracles avec  la sono. La basse et la guitare passent directement dans la sono. Et ça marche ! le concert est magique. Les éthiopiens reprennent en coeur certaines chansons. Ce n'est pas comme en France, les gens applaudissent lorsque quelque chose leur plaît, sans attendre la fin du solo. C'est très spontané. A la fin du concert, nous rentrons vite à l'hôtel : encore une petite nuit de 3 heures et " zou ! Dans le bus pour Addis"

Premier concert en éthiopie

Aujourd'hui c'est notre premier concert en éthiopie ! Nous allons jouer aux éthiopiens leur propre musique, au Goethe institute.
    Nous montons sur scène sous les applaudissements.
    Etienne entame Ayalqem Tedengo à la flûte. Aussitôt, le public reprend en coeur la mélodie. Le moment est très émouvant. Nous essuyons une petite larme. Le climat est particulier, religieux. 
    Charles Courdent, le directeur de l'Alliance française nous a prévenu, les gens se manifestent assez peu dans les concerts, il n'y a pas de rappel. En effet, le dernier morceau terminé, nous quitterons la scène comme ça. Mais je garde un souvenir très fort de cette rencontre, d'avoir pu rencontrer le public éthiopien.

Rencontre avec Mulatu

Aujourd'hui, nous déjeunons avec le pape de l'éthio-jazz, son inventeur dit-il, celui qui fit connaître le stye à travers la BO de Broken Flowers, j'ai nommé Mulatu from Ethiopia, Mulatu Astatké hymself !
    La rencontre n'est pas certaine, nous l'attendons dans un petit restau à l'occidentale, un peu en dehors de la ville, avec Sophie notre chaperon à Addis. Un coup de fil : " il arrive, sort du studio de télé à l'instant ".
    En effet, nous ne tardons pas à le voir arriver dans une Mazda 1300 rouge qu'il a lui-même appelée Lucy (In the Sky with diamonds ?  référence à Lucy l'éthiopienne, première dame de l'humanité ?). Cela m'évoque une scène à la Starsky et Hutch, mais à l'éthiopienne, avec en bande son les cocottes wha wha de Munaye Soup par exemple. 
    -" Hello, I'm Mulatu "
    - " Nice to meet you "
    Nous parlons avec lui du jazz ethiopien, de sa musique d'abord, mais aussi des projets qui mélangent musiciens éthiopiens et étrangers. Certains projets lui déplaisent mais beaucoup dénaturent la musique éthiopienne selon lui.
    "it's all about fusion !" nous dit-il.
    Il parle tout bas de sa belle voix un peu envoûtante. Nous sommes sous le charme. David est obligé de se tordre le cou pour essayer d'entendre quelque chose. 
    Il énumère une suite impressionnante de musiciens de jazz avec qui il a joué, de Duke Ellington à Benny Maupin... L'aventure éthio-jazz ne date pas d'hier !
    Puis il nous parle de son opéra qui sera créé dans un site historique au Nord d'Addis, dans des églises sculptées à même la pierre.
    L'heure tourne. Nous devons nous hâter pour faire la balance au Goethe institute. Juste encore le temps de faire quelques photos avec lui devant Lucy la petite voiture rouge et c'est l'heure de se dire au revoir.
    On a promis de se revoir à son école mercredi. 
    " Bye Mulatu, see you on wednesday ! "

Dear Akale Wube,

Here is a nice surprise which we received this morning.  Mr. Haileyesus, an Ethiopian architect who was present at our first concert at the Goethe Institute wrote us a beautiful hand written letter to express his feelings about our music.  It was heart warming to read his letter and I  had to transcribe it letter by letter in this post.  Here goes:


Dear Akale Wube,

I would like to express to you that I have been magnificently pleasured by your musical Jaz consurt in Addis Ababa Ethiopia on November 25th 2010, in the out door "amphitheatre" when the night's stars and the moon also witnesed your miraculus sound of Ethiopian great soul heats of our great composer"s".  You were great.  You were miraculus.  You have analised the chemistry of Ethiopian soul core.  You have extended its modernity like transplant with best preferences in your musical language analysis.  You have shown us extention and direction towards the growth of the future in Ethiopian music.

I was born in the beginning of 1950.  I have been living in Mulatu Astatkje's soul jaz life. You have shown a further distance.   You have also shown and have made the audience of our young generation to be aware of jaz specialy in tearms of Ethiopian music context.  Those jaz musics were there in Ethiopia.  They were great but hidden in archives where the young generation could hardly notice them.  You have unfolded them.  You have polished them.  You have put them in the laundary machine, you have ironed them.  You have perfumed them.  Then you have extended them through your musical genesesisal interpretation.  Then you surprized us.

I could not belive it when I first saw you.  I just said in my mind "What are those French musicians going to demonstrate?"  The music started then my eyes opened.  Then my eyes opened more wider.  Then my mustles in my eye skin tried to heart as I could not open it any more.  My heart was floating with the stars and the moon in the night open sky live show of yours.

The extra ordinary thing is the vision at the time.  Sounds are coming out in Ethiopia jaz order?  From handsome French men.  It was great.  It was great.  I was in the year 2010.  You  took me to year 2050.  Modern Ethiopia 2050.  You opened a cloged path to Ethiopian Jaz to specialy the young generation.  You were woonderful.  You were beautiful.  You have made us love our music mire than we do now.  You have put a new dimension in Ethiopian Jaz. Specialy it iss a vitamin, nutrition, to motivat it to add speed to its growth.

Balcha Haileyesus, Ethiopian Professional Practicing Architect

More on Dire Daoua

I'm writing this back in our hotel in Addis and I must admit that I already miss Dire Daoua! It's a charming little town with a little over 300,000 inhabitants and an equal amount of "bajaj"s (tri-wheel blue and white taxis) swarming around picking up and people and dropping them off for a mere 1 birr per person (that's the equivalent of 4 euro centimes).

We had barely 24 hours to get a feel of D Dawa, but we did get to loiter around in our  suits taking photos with locals and gathering quite a substantial amount of attention! The town is muuch calmer and greener than Addis, with wildly coloured houses and shops, and trees lining most of it's small streets.

One setback in Dire Dawa was that we had no water for the length of our stay. It has to be said that water in Ethiopia (notably water coming our of a shower head in a cubicle) is a luxury, and it's perfectly normal for some districts to go without running water for days. We had no luck in this department and had to go for 2 concerts, and 2 twelve hour bus rides without a good shower.  It's not the most pleasant of things, but it does put things in perspective in a way that makes you prioritise on what's really essential and what isn't...

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The concert at the Alliance Francaise in Dire Daoua was a lot of fun.  Not much different than the one at the Goethe Institute in Addis, people remained sitting down but participated loudly with singing and clapping in the most unexpected of places! We're usually used to clapping at the end of songs and solos, but Africans clap when they feel they have to clap, be it the middle of a loud solo, at the beginning of a melody they recognise...wherever!

It was heart warming to see the audience stand up to clap at the end of our show and we were lucky enough for the concert to be televised on Dire Daoua TV! Many thanks to Vincent and all his team at the Alliance  in D Daoua for this concert.

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Next up are a last series of concerts at Addis (including one tonight at a club called "A la Votre" and a couple of days off during which god knows what we'll get up to!

--

ps...many apologies for all the spelling mistakes in these posts but I lack the luxury to re-read my posts and proof readers are not an option!

The First Concerts in Addis

It's finally time to write something about our first 2 concerts in Addis.

We played the first one at the Goethe Institute on Friday, organised bu the German Alliance in Addis Ababa.  The crowd was mostly students since the institue is very near the Addis University.

People started gathering as from our first few notes during soundcheck.  By the time we were ready to play the concert, the outside venue was packed with students, sitting down on their stools, waiting eagerly for something to happen.  It was freezing outside, but despite the hassle to keep the instruments in tune, the concert was unforgettable.

The best memory we have is the second song we played in the set: Ayalqem Tedengo.  We have played this song a million times before but this first in Addis was something else.  Everyone immediately recognised Alemayu Eshete's tune and started singing along.  It's hard to explain the feeling and the rush this gave us!  We were all crying all stage by the end of the song. I don't think this has ever happened to me during any concert before.

The feeling of playing music that is completely new to us and most Europeans, yet again is such a strong part of the Ethiopian culture, and having them join in to the song is hard to describe. It was a nod of acknowledgment from them to us, and is all it took to make us feel welcome and glad of bringing a tiny fraction of this music back to Ethiopia!

The second concert was in a club called Gurmaylé.  This time round we sweated the concert away in front of a packed club of people constantly dancing, drinking and cheering. We were joined for a couple of songs by an Ethiopian percussion player whome we had met the night before at the Alizé club.

Our music was complemented brilliantly by 2 dj sets by Kidus and Andy Williams, who played some great funky stuff to which we danced till very late (very early rather).

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Dire Daoua

Next up is our concert at Dire Daoua. We took a 12 hour bus to this other Ethiopian city right after the concert at 5am and will be playing tonight (Monday). The trip was a bit of a mental test for all of us. We were all dead tired from our concert at Gurmaylé and had no sleep. We managed to get up on the wrong bus so we had to wait an extra hour in the freezing cold for the next bus to D Daoua.

On the other hand we did get to see our first sunsrise in Addis. It was a Sunday morning and we could see a huge amount of people runing around, playing football and running all sorts of errands.

Once on the bus the trip was 12 hours of loud music, hooting in order not to run over goats and donkeys, and a constant battle with thee uncomfortable seats! We did get eventually at 5pm and though dead tired, we were all relieved to be on our feet again!

I am writing this at the venue in Dire Daoua which is a beautiful "village-town", well smaller than Addis but much more photogenic!  We toook to opportunity to take a couple of photos in our suits around town!

It's a free gig organised by the Alliance Francaise at Dire Daoua so it's undoubtedly going  to be another great concert!

More details and photos at my next internet stop!

(PS...it's proving hard to post photos to this blog so I'm putting them up on our facebook page...have a look at www.facebook.com/akalewube )

Lunch with Mulatu

Friday 26th November

This post's title speaks for itself.  We had lunch with Mulatu Astatqe!  And we had a lot to talk about. Besides being the living legend he actually is, Mulatu is an incredibly interesting and generous person with a lot of stories and anecdotes to tell.  He also has very strong and frank opinions about music, which is a trait I personally admire.

We chatted about good and bad fusion in music, the development of ethio-jazz today, his meeting with Duke Ellington in Addis and a lot of stories involving the future staging of the opera he has written etc etc etc.  I can barely remember the food I had in my plate but I'll definitely remember this lunch for a while!

He promised he'd listen to our album and give us his honest opinion, as well as a guided visit to his music school in Addis sometime next week, so looking forward to that.

Before we parted we took the obligatory photo together, and one with his car, a gorgeous old red Mazda he calls "Lucy": the personal ride of the father of Ethiopian jazz himself!

Premier contact avec les musiciens éthiopiens

vendredi 26 novembre

Aujourd'hui c'est le deuxième jour pour moi en Ethiopie. Après un voyage de 15 heures via Nairob et Djibouti, Oliver, Pierre et moi avons atterri au milieu de la nuit à Addis Abbeba (On dit Abbaba, ici ).

Une courte fin de nuit à l'hotel, il est temps de filer à la répé. David, Paul et Etienne ont déniché deux chanteuses et un percussioniste qui vont jouer avec nous. Direction l'Alliance française. Nos amis arrivent, les filles sont magnifiques : la réputation des femmes éthiopiennes a fait le tour du monde à juste titre, et leur façon de danser et chanter ne laisse pas indifférent ! Rapidement, nous nous concentrons sur la musique et partageons nos répertoires. Des morceaux à eux, des compos à nous, des grands classiques du répertoire ethiopien...Ceraines choses fonctionnent, d'autre moins, c'est une véritable émotion d'entendre intepréter par eux des chansons que nous avons découvertes en disque et jouées de nombreuses fois.

La danse est aussi une dimension nouvelle qui apporte un élan à la musique. Une dans e très physique, toujours avec un grand sourire ; nous sommes sous le charme. Nous avons hâte de partager la scène avec nos invités samedi...

Beers and Birrs*

Thursday 25th November 2010

Our first rehearsal with our Ethiopian friends was brilliant.  We "exchanged" songs, tried out different instruments and singing on some Ethiopian standards and some of our own material.  We plan to do this again throughout the next couple of days, and definitely try out some of these songs live during one of our concerts here in Addis.

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It's quite impossible to describe in writing my first night out in Addis...Late afternoon, We were joined by Kidus, a great guy who's been living in Addis for the past few years, and who has a very cool blog about Ethiopian music( ) as well as a music shop in the Ethiopian capital.  He proved to be a fantastic night-life guide, taking us to no less than 6 clubs and bars last night!

We started off at a restaurant which is popular in Addis for it's continuous live music and dancing.  The food was exquisite though it was hard to tear your eyes from the  stage with it's contiuously rotating teqa of singers, musicians and fantastic dancing! We were joined by Sophie Bernard at the restaurant, another French living in Addis, who is deeply involved in the music scene here.  After dinner we went to a club nearby called Alize which hosted a band playing Ethiopian and African standards, well grooving their asses off.

The tour continued, and I tasted the local honey wine, and a variety of liquors whose names will be tough to remember.  I won't go into details of bars and clubs we went in and out from but I have to mention the warmth and genuine welcoming feeling we felt all through the night by the people here in Addis.  Everyone is up for a chat about anything, no matter the language or gesturing used! And music is omnipresent. People play and sing to celebrate, to give colour to their evening.  Be it an accordeon play accompanied by a team of dancers, or a "masinco" / percussion duo singing away in a corner, occasionally joined by some locals who recognise the tune.

We ended the night at the Fendika, a club owned by Melaku, an amazing Ethiopian dancer whom we had met at one of our concerts in Paris.  We will actually be  playing later on next week at his club...seriously can't wait for that!

We got to our hotel at 4.30 am and could have stayed out longer!  We even figured out the Ethiopian time system: midnight "normal" time is 6pm Ethiopian time and noon "normal" time is 6am Ethiopian time.  So we technically went to sleep at 10.30pm, which definitely seems more logical, doesn't it?

* "Birr" is the local currency.  No need to explain beer...

The Tour Dates

This is the new poster with all Akale Wube the dates in Ethiopia.  We're working overtime!

Day 1

After a gruelling 15 hour, 3 flight marathon we are finally in Addis! The atmosphere is warm and exciting (even though we were welcomed by an exceptional freak storm), the taxis are as blue and charming as expected and the people are as welcoming as ever!

We've thrown ourselves straight into the music and have our first rehearsal today with an Ethiopian singer, dancer and percussion player. We also have a lot of other concerts planned besides the original 3 dates. Some include collaborations with some great locally based dj's and groups. We will be uploading the new poster with all the details.

A very special thanks to the guys at the Alliance Francaise in Addis who are always more than glad to help out with technical and logistical issues!

Oliver, Pierre et moi partons mercredi pour l'éthiopie rejoindre le reste du groupe.

Bientôt des news d'Addis...

Loïc

The Poster

Here's the poster for the Ethiopian Tour, in typical Akalé Wubé pin-up fashion:

Flight on Schedule

All of us at Akalé Wubé have been waiting long for this moment.  We're off to Ethiopia!

Half of us leave tonight, the other half next Wednesday.  We have a lot of exciting things planned: 3 gigs (and hopefully more to come), a few workshops, a couple of jam sessions and a lot of encounters and things to talk about!

So we're going to try and keep a journal of our activities.  This blog will be updated daily (wi-fi permitting) in English and French.  We'll be posting stories, photos, videos and anything else worth sharing!

So make sure you come back and check our journal regularly!

Oliver
Akalé Wubé