Éthiopiques vs EthioSonic

about world music and globalized music

Abstract

In this article, I describe how three decades of relationship with music from Ethiopia and Eritrea helped me understanding the plurality and excellence of African musics which recordings of its modern music were simply inexistent in Europe or America before 1986. In that year came the idea of producing a series of recordings of Ethiopean music, called éthiopiques, in which dozens of artists were recorded and came into visibility. Interestingly, since 2003 on, not a single month passed without receiving demos or live recordings from bands interpreting Ethiopian music from everywhere, from all Europe, from the USA, from Canada, Brasil, Israel, Japan, Australia, where came the idea of ethioSonic’s project. This situation witness how ethnocentric the concept of acculturation or cultural loss can be, when used to report Western pop influences on “modern” African musicians, without noticing European, American or Japanese musicians who love the musics of Africa so much that their covers or “original” compositions sound purely and simply African.