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(Photo:
Courtesy of Buda Musique)
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Francis Falceto is a French musicologist and music producer, specializing in world music especially of Ethiopian music and he has been working to put it on global music map since 1986. Falceto's love-affair with the Ethiopian music just happened by accident in April-May 1984 when one of his music enthusiast friends who had been to Ethiopia and brought an LP entitled Ere Mela Mela by Mahmoud Ahmed. He and a group of his friends were organizing non-profit concerts out of boredom in small sleepy Western France village called Poitier. They used to listen music from other African countries, but Ere Mela Mela was an absolute shock to their ears because of the uniqueness of Mahmoud's sound, the arrangement and the brass. He made some cassettes out of it and sent it to journalists and music reviewers; it was an absolute shock to them as well. The next day, they all called him back, saying, “Francis, what’s
that? Where did you get this from? It’s great!” So, he immediately
understood that, if these people, who supposedly knowledgeable about music
by profession, if they don’t know this music, it must be a place to dig,
to try to find out if it’s an exception, or if it’s one among many.
After having a few ''crush-course'' about Ethiopia, its culture, music and history by the owner of the only Ethiopian restaurant in Paris at that time. Falceto went naively to Ethiopia to ''bring'' Mahmoud Ahmed, Mulatu Astatqe and other generations of the Swinging-Addis for a music tour in France. He admitted, he failed not once but three times to accomplish his mission due to
