Badume's Band

No Concert Planned.

Swinging Addis Kan
Addis Kan is here. The new kan is here, or the Addis kan (as in Addis Abeba), since Addis is the word for “new” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. Should we have expected the unlikely meeting of the kan ha diskan of the festoù noz from Brittany and the infectious groove of the Swinging Addis ? The one groove which, in the sixties and early seventies, was the unimaginable soundtrack of the vanishing reign of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haylè-Sellassié.

Modern Ethiopian music has since then made its way toward us, a little bit everywhere : USA, Holland, France, Japan, Israel, United Kingdom, Canada, and Switzerland. Musicians of all sorts have integrated resources of the pentatonic range and jazzy Ethiopian beats. Big bands, free-punk, soul or electronic combos, dedicated faithful cover bands and other musical UFOs have done it, sounding in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes, you get the fairly unreal impression of what could have become the Ethiopian music from the glory days if it wouldn’t have been dramatically shot down in action by the atrocious 18 year revolution that took place in 1974, which petrified Ethiopian culture and society – music in particular.

Feet in Brittany ground, and head in the Abyssinia stars, the Badume’s Band now presents his soulful, mind-free, punchy and lively reinterpretation of this universal musical inheritance. The Badume (at home in Breton) has brilliantly shared the concert stage with such remaining giants of the Swinging Addis as Mahmoud Ahmed or Alèmayèhu Eshèté (and those two fully alive legends are certainly picky about their choice of accompanists). And last but not least, they took part in the 2007 edition of the Addis Abeba Festival, welcomed by an enthusiastic audience, mainly Ethiopian. Your turn now to celebrate The Badume’s Band the way it deserves to be celebrated !

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