Falcetto was a promoter of music when he first heard Ethiopian music in 1984. As he explained when I met him, “A friend of mine was a stage manager for a theatre troupe who had been touring Africa and ...

The late Sun Ra said his jazz came from outer space, with albums like Visits Planet Earth, We Travel the Space Ways, and the classic ESP disk The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, with him on the cover, ...

With more than 20 volumes and counting, the Éthiopiques series on France's Buda Musique has been an invaluable source for Ethiopian music; this 28-track, 2xCD record takes on the uneviable task of ...

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/5560216/5560311" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> The ...

Ethiopian popular music went through an intense creative flowering during the early '70s, cross-referencing traditional styles with jazz, funk, rock, and whatever else could be used to get people ...

A horn lover's paradise exists and it is Addis Ababa. At least, the Ethiopian capital was for one night in January 2004, when the American Either/Orchestra, a proponent of "Ethio-jazz, played a ...

Dress code: Ladies - Silver wellies, glittery tights, pink tutus, fairy wands and beanie hats. But really, what do you expect from jazz kittens? Gents - anything so long as you are sporting a trim ...

When Paris-based world music label Buda Musique began the Ethiopiques series, reissuing the largely unknown Ethiopian popular recordings of the 60s and 70s, it couldn’t have had any idea that the ...

Clearly, the Ethiopiques recordings played an important part in bringing Akalé Wubé to life… Yes they did, and I dare say that all bands playing this music at the moment have been inspired at some ...

Apologies for the deadly silence over here these past two weeks. We haven't run out out of good music worth writing about, of course: the good CDs kept turning up, it's just that I wasn't in the ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

The singer and songwriter Alèmayèhu Eshèté, who has died aged 80, was one of the stars of the “golden age” of Ethiopian music in the 1960s and early 70s – and then became a cult hero for many western ...