Francis Falceto & His 30-years Love-affair with Ethiopian Contemporary Music

(Photo: Courtesy of Buda Musique)

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

Street-kid turnout Cultural Ambassador- an Ethiopian Success Story

Melaku, the Street-kid!

Born around 1980 in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, Melaku (which means the Angel in Amharic) Belay- the household name of Ethiopian traditional music group of our time, has never imagined he would be a cultural ambassador for a country which for some a synonym with famine. The road to his success was not rosy.

Before all this fame and stardom, before Melaku Belay has become the man he is today, he was indeed a a street-kid. During the political conflicts of the 70s and 80 Ethiopia, all of his family fled to the Sudan.
Melaku was alone: "Life was difficult. Imagine Sleeping on the street, going to school alone, living without family, without money, with nothing." But he underscores that he has never regretted having lived that life : It helped him to acquire the strength and willingness to work more to earn a life and become the person he wanted to be today. Melaku has a passion for dance since the age of 4 years. He started dancing at this age in ceremonies in Addis Ababa, as the feast of Timket (Epiphany). The dance, which began as a leisure, has turned into a professional career when an old woman, he considered as his mother, told him

I'll Stop singing Romantic Songs: Legendary Ethiopian Singer Alemayehu Eshete

Alemayehu Eshete is one of the living legends of modern Ethiopian popular culture and one of the outstanding Ethiopian vocalists who emerged during the heyday of Ethiopian music in the turbulent 1960s. Alemayehu, known by many as the ''Ethiopian Elvis'' or "the James Brown of Addis", was a pioneer to modernize Ethiopian music by combining R&B, Ethiopian groove, soul, rock n' roll, and traditional Ethiopian music to create something truly unique. 

His parents wanted and dreamed their only child to be an engineer, a medical doctor or a lawyer and when they found out that Alemayehu was singing at the local night-clubs, their heart broken. Especially, Alemayehu's father, who did everything in his capacity to educate his son, took the news personally and wanted to shoot and kill Alemayehu. The aspiring artist wasn't in good terms with father for more many years. Understandably, singing had a very low status in Ethiopia during those days.   

Alemayehu who was determined to realize his dreams, has dared to adopt elements from rock-n-roll and American soul, including body movements, dance and hair styles, eventually coming to be known as  or "James Brown of Addis." Over the course of years Eshete released over 30 albums that became enormous hits in Ethiopia and led various orchestras, including the famous Police Orchestra and groups that he himself established.

Colonel Retta Demeqe was the one who recognized Alemayehu's talent and

Mahmoud Ahmed's Journey From Shoe-Shine boy to An International Superstar

“In concert, his [Mahmoud's] enigmatic multi-octave voice seizes on a note, brief or sustained, and makes its pitch tremble as it its urgency could barely be contained” The New York Times

“MAHMOUD Ahmed has a rich, deep voice that oozes liquid chocolate down a phone line crackling with static; what a pity I can't understand a word he is saying.” Sydney morning herald

75 years ago a baby named Mahmoud Ahmed brought to this world by an Ethiopian working class parents at a place locally known as Mercato in the center of Addis Ababa. Neither his family nor himself had imagined that this little boy one-day would be an internationally acclaimed artist. Mahmoud coming from Ethiopia's well known entrepreneurial and hard-working Gurage ethnic group, his first profession like many of his fellow mates, was shining shoes on the streets of Addis. He tried a series of other menial jobs before he ended up as handy-man at the Arizona Club which was back then an after-work hangout place for Emperor Haile Selassie I's Imperial Body Guard Band. On a fateful night, one of the singers didn't show-up and Mahmoud

Veteran & Young Ethiopian Artists Rock Stockholm

Internationally acclaimed Ethiopian singers Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemayehu Eshete as well as Ethiocolor, an Addis Ababa based folklore group, took the grand stage at Stockholm Culture Festival on August 13, in an evening curated by Selam — a cultural organization based in Sweden. 

Thousands of music fans from Ethiopia and other countries were first entertained by the eleven-strong Ethiocolor, which fuses music and dances using traditional instruments that are arranged in a modern touch. The musicians and dancers who comprise three different generations, are recognized for their vibrant live shows with rhythmic dances of various ethnic groups of Ethiopia.