Chapter 05
Addis Ababa, Radio and the Recorded Century
5 min
A horn enters with a clipped phrase. Guitar answers from the left channel. Organ holds a chord, then slips into a melodic line. The drummer does not rush. This is one sound of Addis Ababa in the 1960s and 1970s, created by working bands in theatres, hotels, clubs, broadcasters and studios.
Modern institutions arrived with power attached
Imperial courts, military bands and schools helped establish new ensembles and systems of training. Brass and woodwind instruments entered Ethiopian institutions through diplomacy, imported pedagogy and military organisation. Musicians adapted them to local melodic and rhythmic ideas.
The Italian occupation of 1935-1941 brought violence, propaganda and colonial control. Ethiopia's longer history of state independence does not erase that occupation's colonial effects. Music from the period must be dated and read alongside the institutions that commissioned, restricted or circulated it.
After liberation, theatres, radio and state ensembles expanded the public field. Orchestra Ethiopia, directed for a crucial period by Tesfaye Lemma, brought musicians and instruments from different regions into staged programmes. Its work was not a transparent miniature of the nation. It was an ambitious institutional arrangement of diversity.
Radio created stars and a common ear
Broadcasting allowed a voice to enter homes far from the room where it was recorded. Tilahun Gessesse became one of the defining Ethiopian singers of the recorded century through the force and clarity of his voice and the reach of national institutions. Mahmoud Ahmed combined supple vocal ornament with bands capable of sustaining long grooves. Hirut Bekele, Bizunesh Bekele and other women built major careers in an industry whose histories still too often place women in a single corrective paragraph.
Radio did more than distribute songs. It favoured languages, durations, ensemble sizes and performers compatible with institutional schedules. A broadcast canon is therefore a history of access as well as excellence.
The Walias Band makes repetition active
The Walias Band's Tezeta cassette was recorded in Addis in 1975. Begin with the title track, then let the album continue through “Endegena,” “Gumegum” and “Mestirawi Debdabe.” The keyboard does not merely state a tune. It adjusts voicing, register and attack while bass and drums keep the cycle alive. Horns appear as colour and punctuation.
The band worked in the Hilton and other urban settings where extended performance shaped ensemble discipline. Several members later migrated, and Hailu Mergia eventually returned to international touring and recording. That later recognition should not make the original band disappear behind one revived career.
Ibex Band deserves to be heard in its own name
The Ibex Band supported major singers, including Mahmoud Ahmed, and helped shape recordings now central to Ethiopian popular history. Its 1976 Stereo Instrumental Music sessions let the group stand alone. The credits name Selam Woldemariam on lead guitar, Giovanni Rico on bass, Dereje Mekonen on keyboards, Tesfaye Mekonen on drums, Fekadu Amdemeskel and Tewodros Meteku on saxophone and flute, and Girma Chibsa on congas.
Read that list once, then hear the record. Guitar tone, bass placement, keyboard voicing, drum pocket, horn blend and conga texture are compositional facts. “Backing band” is not an adequate musical description.
Mulatu Astatke and the name Ethio-jazz
Mulatu Astatke developed his music through study and work across Ethiopia, Britain and the United States, bringing jazz instrumentation and arranging into dialogue with Ethiopian melodic frameworks. He is central to the history called Ethio-jazz. International reissues and film placements later made that term a powerful discovery label.
The label is useful when it leads to exact works and collaborators. It becomes misleading when every horn-led Ethiopian recording is filed under Mulatu, or when one inventor story erases bands, arrangers and earlier institutional exchange.
Hear Mulatu Steps Ahead from 2010 as well as classic compilations. The later album shows an artist continuing to compose for ensembles rather than existing only as the recovered sound of a golden age.
Mahmoud Ahmed makes a song elastic
On Mahmoud Ahmed's Ere Mela Mela, the voice stretches and tightens against the band. Repeated lines accumulate intensity through ornament, register and timing. The ensemble can hold a pattern long enough for the vocal line to change its emotional meaning.
“Hypnotic groove” is too small a description. Follow the singer's breath, the horn response, the drum pattern and the way a phrase returns. The record's power lies in human coordination.
The Derg changed what could be said and where musicians could work
The 1974 revolution ended imperial rule and brought the Derg to power. Nationalisation, censorship, political violence, war and economic constraint reshaped cultural institutions. Musicians navigated official ensembles, restrictions, private rooms, migration and changing markets.
It is tempting to classify every song from the period as propaganda or resistance. Real careers are less tidy. A musician could work within an institution and still make subtle choices; a popular lyric could be personal, coded, politically appropriated or heard differently by different audiences. Political interpretations need dates and evidence; policy cannot be read directly from a melody.
Cassettes and migration created another archive
Cassettes were portable, copyable and suited to shops, buses and transnational family networks. They moved music beyond official schedules while making credits easier to lose. Migration carried artists to Washington, D.C., Europe and elsewhere, where restaurants, churches, clubs and community organisations became new performance infrastructures.
The Library of Congress collection built by Kay Kaufman Shelemay records many of those lives. Its interviews reveal musicians as institution builders, not simply exiles preserving a frozen home culture. The collection is rich, but centred largely on one U.S. metropolitan area. Diaspora is another locality, not a substitute for Ethiopia.
