AKALE WUBE / アカレ・ウーベ / AKALE WUBE / レコード

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Akalé Wubé transforms an ethiopian sound into a  retro-futuristic soundtrack which makes you dance from head to toe.

It is an improbable story: one that reunites, a group  of young Parisians with the Swingin' Addis sounds of the seventies.  In October 2008, five musicians got together on a wild project: to  delve into the repertoire of the ethiopian golden age, as defined by  the producer Francis Falceto, to whom we owe the series of reissues  “Ethiopiques”. “The idea was to transcribe songs from this  period and rearrange them to the sound of our times. First off, it  eliminated the need to write songs that risked falling into ethio- jazz clichés. The aim was not to bring about some artistic revolution  through our work but simply to give and take pleasure by performing  this music!” Through this retro-futuristic alchemy, the Akalé Wubé  quintet was born: a curious name borrowed from a song by the great  saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, a bit of an old-fashioned expression which can by translated as “my beautiful” in Amharic, a poetic  metaphor which also means “beauty of the soul”.

Body and soul! The Great Black Music currency can be found here,  reinvented at every second. Take for example Mulatu Astatqé’s  classics, the master of ethio-jazz, songs like “Mètché New” by  Téshomé Sissay, or even some other lesser known rarities...Akalé  Wubé delivers an original vision which transfigures the original  version. “One of the challenges was to play the songs without a  singer.” The vocal parts are thus interpreted by the flute, starting  with the bansuri on “Ayalqem Tèdèngo”: the opening tune by  Alèmayehu Esheté, the godfather of local funk, which uncorks the 
album. The group takes on another challenge by glorifying a song from 
the Eritrean repertoire called “Bazay”. It couples swing and  straight eighths to develop  a dance-floor tune full of breaks and  counterpoint. Finally, the ultimate challenge was to integrate four  of their original compositions into this journey, guided by the good  sense of groove. “Nebyat”, a juicy ballad stained with psychedelic  jazz, evolves through a post-rock direction, while “Jawa  Jawa” (meaning “to sway, to swing” in Amharic) is a prototype of  funk soul jazz breakbeats, agile percussion and subtle keyboards,  brass playing in unison and a guitar riff in the tradition of The  Meters. “Kokob” is based on a slightly broken up reggae riddim. 
This track contains a sample of Hailé Sélassié’s historic speech  at the United Nations in 1963, the same one used by Bob Marley in his  emblematic “War”. Last but not least, the minimalistic  “Ragalé”: some light melodica touches, brushes barely grazed by  the drummer and the deep blow of the tenor sax close this chapter by  opening some new horizons.