Addis Through The Looking Glass

There were further sessions in the UK, where another set of musicians became involved. They include the reggae singer Mykaell Riley, famous for his work with Steel Pulse, Jamiroquai’s drummer Nick Van Gelder, the Horns of Negus brass section, bass work from Dr Das of the Asian Dub Foundation, and double bass from Bernard O’Neill, who works with Dubulah in the Arabic-influenced Syriana. As for Dubulah himself, he played guitar, bass, harmonicas and keyboards, produced the set, and co-wrote several of the songs.

The result is an album that constantly surprises and constantly changes direction, from atmospheric, wide-screen, drifting jazz-dub instrumentals like the title track, to breathy love songs from Tsedenia, and bluesy traditional pieces featuring the messenqo fiddle or traditional krar harp, now treated to a Dub Colossus make-over, with spacey, microtonal keyboard effects added on the otherwise sparse Yigermel. For Dubulah, it’s a beautiful song that reminds me of someone sitting on a hillside at night up in Gondar, in the north of the country, looking up at the sky with a fire going. I’ve got traditional recordings of the track, but there was no point in just providing a traditional Ethiopian Azmari album.

Songs like Kurt, a soulful, thoughtful piece about the sometimes secretly dominant role played by women in Ethiopia, sung by Tsedenia, showcase the inventive piano work of Samuel Yirga, whose solo album, produced by Dubulah, was later released on Real World— a superb mix of Ethio-jazz, solo piano and soul. Guragigna, a live show favourite, which features lead vocals by Mimi, is a ferociously funky Ethiopian song which sounds like a blue taxi going at full speed with no brakes during rush hour in Addis Ababa.

Then there’s reggae, of course, from the jazzy, brass-backed ‘Dub Will Tear Us Apart’ to the gently sturdy Wehgene, featuring Mimi’s sister Tiruedel. There are also two Ethiopian-flavoured re-workings of great Jamaican reggae classics. Satta Massagana, originally recorded by The Abyssinians in 1976, is now treated to lyrics in both English and Amharic, with fine brass work from the Horns of Negus, while Althea and Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking, a number one hit in the UK two years later, is given a similar multi-lingual treatment. It’s a song that proved massively popular in the UK during the band’s live shows, and Dubulah was naturally keen to record it though Tsedenia was the only one of the Ethiopian musicians who had heard it before.

Mixed in with all this there’s one other key influence: the jazz styles that became so important during the ‘golden era’ of Ethiopian music back in the 1960s and early ’70s; music that is now rightly popular among Western fans, following the success of the Ethiopiques compilations from the period. This was the time of Emperor Haile Selassie, a fan of brass ensembles and jazz— though not the reggae so beloved of the Rastas who deified the ageing ruler! —when some of the country’s greatest players could be heard performing with the Police or Army Band, or the Imperial Bodyguard Band. It was a music scene that collapsed during the repression of the Mengistu regime, when many musicians fled to work in the West, but is now recovering. For twenty years there were no brass sections in Addis, says Dubulah, but now a whole new jazz-flavoured live scene has emerged there.

One of the best new horn sections are the Bole Better Brass, session players who regularly work with Feleke Hailu and Samuel Yirga in Addis, and can be heard on two tracks here. They are featured on a driving instrumental treatment of Feqer Aydelem Wey, an instrumental treatment of a song by the Ethiopiques star Ayelew Mesfin, and again on the album’s final track, Gubeliye. Written first by Feleke, who adds an assortment of different brass and reed instruments, and then finished by Dubulah, this is a driving piece that’s very different to anything else on the album, an experimental “soundtrack to the madness of Addis” that mixes big band styles and dub, with sturdy brass work matched against an equally sturdy bass line.

It provides a powerful ending to a set that marks yet another landmark in the colourful and wildly varied career of Dubulah, whose interest in reggae started when he played in a school reggae band in Hackney, east London. Since then he has “spent time trying to be an avant-garde composer and failing miserably, living in a squat in Stepney with one cold water tap and large rats”, before working with reggae star Mykaell Riley “so I went from trying to sound like Bartok to playing in the style of the Mighty Diamonds, Black Uhuru and Steel Pulse!”. He moved on to form Transglobal Underground with Tim Whelan and Hamid Man Tu, recording six albums with these world music mavericks, famous for mixing beats with a wide array of global influences, before leaving to form Temple of Sound with Neil Sparkes. Along the way he became a prolific producer, working with the likes of Natacha Atlas.

Dub Colossus may have started out as a studio-based project, but have proved that they are also a rousing live band known to transport audiences to the sultry clubs and pounding dancehalls of Addis Ababa with their intriguing and exuberant mix of traditional Ethiopian sounds, sturdy reggae rhythms and a modern dub twist. Their sound is simultaneously familiar yet fresh, with echoes of such diverse influences as The Abyssinians, Sun Ra, Tlahoun Gesese, Pablo Gadd, Hirut Beqele, Dick Dale and King Tubby.