One of the last remaining ‘azmari bets’ (poetry/music houses) in the Ethiopian capital has been saved from demolition to make way for a skyscraper. But as Addis Ababa pushes to modernise, many worry ...

You’d expect a conversation with Mulatu Astatke to be about music. He is, after all, the father of a musical genre: Ethio-jazz. But when he talks about the art form, he tends to focus on its ...

Admas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms. Steve Kiviat Admas. From left, clockwise: Abegasu Shiota, Henock Temesgen, ...

Kay Kaufman Shelemay received fellowships and grants for the research and publication process for this book from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial ...

The golden age of Ethiopian soul music kicked off in the mid '60s with a flurry of horns, eerie keyboards, and whip-crack drumming. Woven through the groove was the strained, conflicted voice of ...