Ethiopia’s golden age intrigues Hub sax man
January 16th, 2008 | EthioPolitics.com |Saxophonist Danny Mekonnen was surprised when he realized after settling in Boston five years ago that New England might be where he’d find his musical roots.
“I didn’t expect it,” said the 27-year-old Paris, Texas, native. “It was really exciting.”
The roots? Ethiopian. And while Ethiopian music isn’t exactly bumping up against Chris Brown, Fergie and Alicia Keys on the radio in Boston, Mekonnen discovered there are more than a few people here who will fly like bees to this slinky North African sound.
And Mekonnen had the honey: a plan to form a band that puts a modern spin on the funky sounds of Ethiopia’s golden age of music of the ’60s and ’70s. Now he’s the leader of the Debo Band - “debo” meaning communal labor or collective effort in Amharic, Ethiopian’s main language - which performs Friday at Milky Way Lounge and Lanes.
“I got plugged into the local Ethiopian scene by, among others, Russ Gershon of Either/Orchestra,” said Mekonnen, who also befriended members of the Stick and Rag Village Orchestra, an outfit that performs a mix of Eastern European, klezmer and circus music. Several Stick and Rag members are in Debo, along with an eclectic mix of players whose backgrounds range from jazz-rock noise outfits to the Boston Philharmonic.
Add in three Boston-based Ethiopian singers and you’ve got a sound that bridges cultures - which is just what Ethiopian pop music did in its golden age.
“I remember the Ethiopian music that my parents played around the house,” said Mekonnen, whose mother and father were born in Ethiopia. “But most of it was on mixtapes from friends. There was no artist information or anything like that.
“I did hear the music, but I didn’t think much about it. Mostly I listened to jazz records, John Coltrane and all the greats.”
A trip to Ghana during his senior year in college got Mekonnen thinking differently.
“(In Ghana) I was answering the question, ‘Where are you from?’ Part of me wanted to say I was from Ethiopia. When you’re in your early 20s, you start asking yourself, ‘Who am I?,’ especially if you have roots outside the United States.”
In Boston, Mekonnen immersed himself in the sound he’d heard as background music in Texas. He teamed up with kindred spirits to perform it and in 2004 co-produced Either/Orchestra’s first Boston show with noted Ethiopian composer/performer Mulatu Astatke, who now is a fellow at Radcliffe (and performs again with Either/Orchestra at the Regattabar on Jan. 24.)
While the music of the lauded “Ethiopiques” album series that captures such golden-age heavies as Astatke and Alemayehu Eshete is an important influence on the band, Mekonnen is a fan of groups like the Imperial Bodyguard Band, with its brassy, driving sound heavily influenced by old-school American soul music.
All of which begs the question: What does a jazz tenor sax player studying for his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Harvard find so appealing about an esoteric sound made an ocean away four decades ago?
“It’s a music that’s almost within a time capsule,” Mekonnen said. “There’s all kinds of world beat and Afropop music that’s interesting, but there’s something about this that makes me wonder, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?’ There’s just something mysterious about it.”