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...