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CD Review
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Sing Out!, CD Review >>
If Buda Musique's venerable Ethipiques series gave Westerners a privileged glimpse into the brief flowering of Ethiopian pop music during th late '60s and early '70s, it also left most listeners with a lot of questions, first among them usually being "where can we get new Ethipian music?" Tje Ethipian-American collective Bole 2 Harlem helps answer this question with a cross-cultural blend of Amharic pop with a very New York edge. The group is a creation of American producer and musician David Schommer, who was introduce to Ethipian music and culture as a child, when his father helped set up the first university in Adis Ababa in the late 1950s. Schommer, along with rapper Maki Siraj and singer Tigiist Shibabaw, bassist Henok Tenesgen and a few non-Ethipian players, put a tight gunky new uptown spin on Ethipian modalities. The exuberant title track is a slyly confident masterpiece, all syncopated handclaps, rolling basslines and brubling synths punctuated by the beguiling vocals of Shibibaw and the growling , rangy rap of Siraj. The rest of the album delivers on the promise of this cut, packing in reggae, hip-hop and Latin influences into a relentless urban Ethiopian charm. 03/01/07
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