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Smile UK Store - Ethiopiques - the Very Best of Ethiopiques: Hypnotic Grooves from the Legendary Series
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List Price: £14.99
Our Price: £7.98
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Manteca
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 6984582245216
Label: Manteca
Manufacturer: Manteca
Number Of Discs: 2
Publisher: Manteca
Release Date: 2007-08-13
Studio: Manteca
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: All hail Ethiopiques! Hot and spicy.
Comment: Hey pop pickers! Do you despair at the state of British indie music? Need that itch seriously scratching? Man,this is one wild and groovy ride. Weird and wonderful and very much deserving the attention of any curious and open minded music fan.I ain't no world music fan ,but the currently very stale indie scene forces one to search further afield to satisfy ones needs. If you like this, watch the film: Broken flowers (Bill Murray). Alot of this music soundtracks that film brilliantly. Also try Tinariwen (for seriously cool desert blues)or Kasai allstars.
We have people like Damon Albarn to thank for drawing our attention to such brilliant music. Nice one.Fair play to bands like Vampire weekend and The Good,the bad and the queen for mixing it up with sound results (no pun intended).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Patchy offering
Comment: This seems a pretty random collection of tracks. There are a few things that grab my attention, but to be honest they are in the minority. I've read reviews comparing them for impact with the Buena Vista Social club. Maybe this showcases Ethipian music in it's best light and is comparable with the Buena Vista's showcasing of a portion of Cuba's musical heritage to maximum effect; but if that's true then it just emphaises how much more Cuba has to offer, and how much more acceptable and familiar the traditional sounds of Cuban music are to the general listener's (including general world music listener's) ear. To me it's one for the collector to represent Ethiopia perhaps, but I'll only really go back to a few selected tracks.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Haunting and uplifting music that deserves a wide audience.
Comment: The 28 tracks on this wonderful double CD are drawn from a series of 23 Ethiopiques albums put together by the inspirational French promoter and champion of Ethiopian music Francis Falceto. This haunting, uplifting music which is an intriguing mixture of jazz, soul, funk & folk was created and recorded in Addis Ababa during the final years of Emperor Haile Selassie's reign(1930-74).
'The Very Best of Ethiopiques' has been described as "doing for Ethiopia what the Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuba" and this marvellous music certainly deserves to reach the widest possible audience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: music you can eat
Comment: I felt I had to review this release if only to address the balance of a spectacularly ignorant reviewer who gave it one star.
What (s)he fails to grasp is that the influence of funk and jazz etc on these tracks is not a sign of Africans trying to copy American styles from yesteryear, but that popular musics around the world influence each other (see Vampire Weekend for a modern example), and compilations like this serve to bring music to a wider audience that would otherwise be ignored. And about time too!
The influence of jazz and funk on popular music can be seen all over Africa. This is hardly surprising when you think that the original influences for these genres can be traced back to 'traditional' African music. But the point is, everywhere does it differently, and the blend of musical influences heard on these cds are truly mesmerising, including modal scales and liturgical music from the Orthadox Ethiopian church.
What surprised me, though, is the wide apeal of the cds. My flatmates got used to me putting on random cds but when I played this, they all loved it - comments from 'ideal at a dinner party' to 'great to make love to'. So there you have it - something for everyone!
All in all, a great advert for Ethiopian music and a great compilation of tracks that show just how rich this music was, and still is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic gateway into Ethiopian music
Comment: Any best of from the titanic Ethiopiques series was going to make for interesting listening.
This double CD package really comes up trumps, giving you a fine sample of the artists featured throughout.
Disc One is Jazzier in it's feel. We have the slow meandering Heywete before we dive into the painfully cool Yerkermo Sew. It is Mulatu Astatque's music that has brought Ethiopian music to a wider audience. Hardly surprising. Taken from his experiences of living in America, the grooves of his tracks are funky, infectious. Yekatit is probably my favourite one from him - rolling beat, the coolest slice of funk.
Getatchew Mekurya's music is far last westernized, more organic - the saxophones lead to towards Egypt. I love Shellela on the second disc.
The other artist whose music deserves a definite mention is soul singer Mahmoud Ahmed, several fine tracks on here including the beautifully languid Fetsum Denq Ledj Nesh.
I would say that this best of CD is ideal for those just dipping into the music. An excellent gateway into the rest of the series.
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