POP MUSIC - AMAZING GRACE

The other worldly compositions of an Ethiopian nun.

- AMANDA PETRUSICH

In 1997, Buda Musique, a French record label, launched “Éthiopiques,” a multivolume CD series that collected songs from Ethiopia’s golden age of pop music—an era that began in the late sixties and lasted until the mid-seventies, when a military junta overthrew the Ethiopian Empire and smothered musical output with repressive policies, including curfews. Before the coup, the evening air over Addis Ababa was rich with sound: the pentatonic scales of traditional Ethiopian music, the chromatic scales of Western jazz, the bodied grooves of American soul and funk. Swinging Addis, as the city was later known, nurtured dozens of extraordinary musicians, including the Ethio-jazz titan Mulatu Astatke; the “Ethiopian Elvis,” Alèmayèhu Eshèté; and the beloved tenor Tilahun Gessesse, who was given a state funeral when he died, in 2009. For anyone unfamiliar with the scene—in the pre-streaming days, it was nearly impossible for Western listeners to acquire these records— each new installment of “Éthiopiques” was thrilling.