Another Quickie review
“Ethiopiques 19” (Ethiopiques (Buda Series), Mahmoud Ahmed)
I don’t have every album in this series1 , but every CD except one has been a great addition to my African music library. My favorite song on this album, called Tezeta, has a simply stunning bass line, along with a moody vocal, sort of like a Hazzan2, though in Ethiopian. Great sax too.
Tezeta means nostalgia, a bittersweet longing for the past, btw, and is a frequent song subject. In fact, there is an entire Ethiopiques album devoted to it.
- estimate without counting that I’ve picked up slightly more than half of the 23 titles, mostly from my pals at Aquarius Records in San Francisco [↩]
- cantor [↩]