Alemye, from 1974.
The azmaris were originally wandering minstrels, roaming the Abyssinian countryside. These varied snapshots of the musical life of Addis Ababa in the 1990s are offered as a kind of homage to them.
Sublimely tilted like Sun Ra, rocking like James Brown at the Apollo, the tracks here by police bands are a reminder that Ethiopia at the time had no independent modern groups.
The music of Tigray and Eritrea — where the majorities speak the Tigrigna language — is rhythmically and melodically different from Ethiopian music.
His first LP, Almaz, originally released in 1973.
Frantic rock and heartrending ballads from this showman with the Little Richard pompadour.
This is sensational; hotly recommended.
“The holy grail of British Asian music; the album that birthed the British Asian dancefloor.”
‘Recorded in London in 1982, the nine-track album combines producer Kuljit Bhamra’s searing synthesiser melodies and hammering drum machine rhythms with the Punjabi-language folk singing of his classically trained mother, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra. Part early acid house experiment, part north Indian tradition and part disco-funk, the record was a futuristic outlier: the south Asian fusion sounds of bhangra were only just beginning; the mainstream crossover music of the Asian underground was more than a decade away; and the British Asian diaspora were largely relegated to meeting at weddings and community events, rather than at the disco’ (The Guardian).