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| Mahmoud Ahmed |
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.
Unfortunately, the interpreter - the third and vital presence for this interview - has failed to turn up, which means we are in a bit of a bind. Ahmed is a soul legend in his native Ethiopia, where his elegant, seductive songs speak to millions, but his English is scratchy and my Amharic is non-existent.
Just when we are about to regretfully hang up, we are saved. A member of the Melbourne Ethiopian band J-Azmaris, by wonderful coincidence, has popped into the Arts Centre to rehearse (they are appearing on stage with Ahmed when he arrives in January) and agrees to act as translator. Slowly, with lots of ''can you repeat that please'' and plenty of nervous laughter, we manage to piece together the remarkable story of the singer's rise to fame and his forthcoming visit to Australia.
If you've heard of Ahmed then it's probably due to the Ethiopiques compilation of CDs released in the late 1990s by the French label Buda Musique, which did for the country's music scene what the Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuba's. The series consists of 27 volumes plus a ''Very Best Of'' that was swathed in plaudits and endorsed by, among others, Elvis Costello - who hailed it as ''soulful, sorrowful and joyful music'' - and Robert Plant.
But before that, Ahmed and his ilk, namely singer Alemayehu Eshete, saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya and bandleader Mulatu Astatke, were something of a mystery outside Africa.
Saying that, he's been around for aeons. Born in 1941, in the country's capital, Addis Ababa, Ahmed's life started out as fairly ordinary, by Ethiopian standards. He came from a poor family; his dad was a handyman and he worked as a shoeshine boy before and after school to earn extra income. But from an early age he knew he wanted to make music his life. ''My father didn't support me becoming a musician, but later, when I am changing my life through music, he started to encourage me.''
Ethiopia is a place forever associated with Band Aid and famine but it hasn't always been that way. In the late 1960s it was home to some of the funkiest big bands on the continent - the African answer to ''swinging London'', flaunting a wild nightlife and an experimental music scene. Musicians were developing their own styles by mixing traditional Amharic sounds based on the pentatonic scale with black-American rhythm and blues, soul and funk, with plenty of brass thrown in for good measure, creating a fusion that sounds a bit like an Otis Redding or James Brown single being wobbled on the turntable.
Ahmed was heavily influenced by his personal heroes, who were, he says, Pat Boone, Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke, but he also looked up to local singers.
The music scene had largely been generated through various marching bands established during the '40s on the orders of the country's benevolent dictator, Emperor Haile Selassie, who had been impressed by an Armenian brass band on a visit to Turkey and had promptly inaugurated his own musical strike force. A host of official bands were founded as a result, the most eminent being the Imperial Bodyguard Band.
Every night in downtown Addis, big bands in crisp tuxedos pumped out brash fusions in bars and hotels. At the Arizona Nightclub, a young Ahmed was working in the kitchen while dreaming of bigger things. When the Imperial Bodyguard was short of a singer one night, he stepped up to the microphone and, as they say, a star was born.
But swinging Addis stopped rocking abruptly in 1974 when Selassie was overthrown by a military junta that closed down the country for 18 years and silenced the nightlife. Regular curfews meant that clubs could no longer operate. Many musicians fled into exile; the ones who stayed were allowed to perform only if they were writing music that was approved by the socialist party.
''It was a hard problem,'' Ahmed says. ''We had to play the music not what we wanted but for the government, for politics. There was no choice. You had to send it to them to be censored and then they would give you permission to do it.''
Ahmed co-operated simply because he had to - the alternative would have been too terrible. ''I can't live without music in my life.''
The socialist regime was overthrown in 1991 by the country's former prime minister, the late Meles Zenawi. Since then, Ethiopia has made a stumbling transition into a neo-democracy and the stars of the country, including Ahmed, have begun to find fame outside Africa.
This is largely due to the dedicated passions of French music promoter-turned-curator Francis Falceto. He had heard a song by Ahmed and was so excited by it he travelled to Addis and tracked down the singer working in a shop. Plans to get him to tour came to nothing, but Falceto hunted out other, similar musicians, bought all the original vinyl he could find and convinced the Buda Musique record label to release a compilation of the best. The CDs generated worldwide interest and these days Ahmed travels a lot, performing to the diasporas of Ethiopians in places such as Washington, DC. He has appeared at Glastonbury and the Barbican in London. In 2007, he won the BBC World Music Award.
But home is still in Addis Ababa, where his seven children and two grandchildren also live (the eldest child is following in his musical footsteps but the others have quite different professions).
The landscape of his childhood is vastly different from the place he knows today, where newly built shimmering high-rise hotels and art galleries jostle for space with shanty towns.
Is music still as important as it was? ''Oh yes, very,'' he says. ''Ethiopia is so diverse; there are lots of different religions and tribes living together. Music helps pull them all together as one and it generates an economy.'' He is, he says, looking forward to his first visit to Melbourne, where he will take to the stage with the J-Azmaris musicians with a mix of original compositions as well as a tribute to some of his contemporaries, paying special respect to the prominent father of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke.
There will be plenty of trumpets, of course, and much ''eskista'', a type of dance that involves a shaking sensation that begins at the shoulders and quivers down the spine into the legs and feet. It is Ahmed's eskista, coupled with his swooping, free-wheeling vocals, that has made him a legend - a fact our makeshift translator can readily attest to.
''Oh yes, he is a star,'' he says quietly but fervently at the end of the interview. ''He's been one in his own country for 50 years.''
A sleeping giant whose music has finally stumbled out of Africa and made it to our shores.
www.theage.com.au
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