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 )