For 30 years, George Lowe has been a fan of (some might say "obsessed with") Ethiopia's Golden Age of Music: the 1960s and 70s, the last years of the Haile Selassie monarchy and the time when "Ethio-jazz" was invented. George's band, the Afro-Zen Allstars, feature a large number of his arrangements of Ethio-jazz classics, and the band has been recognized as among the foremost interpreters of this style of music in the USA.
The audience for Ethio-jazz in America is admittedly a niche market, but in Ethiopia it's a little different story. And all of a sudden last week, George and Afro-Zen became household names in Ethiopia. The photo above is a screenshot from the Zoom interview George did with Seifu Fantahun, who hosts the most popular show on Ethiopian broadcast TV. That episode has been viewed over 350,000 time on YouTube, which is certainly not the main way the show is watched.
How did this happen? When George explained it all to me, my comment was "This whole story reads like the plot summary of a particularly implausible movie." I'm not going to give you any spoilers here -- I've invited George to join me this week on Global A Go-Go so you can hear the whole story direct from the horse's mouth. And we'll play some of the music in question, by Afro-Zen and by the original artists, as well.
Also this week (Sunday December 1, 1:00-3:00 PM on WRIR, for two weeks afterwards at wrir.org/listen, and any old time at my podcast site): Songhoy Blues and the music of Mali's Songhai people, The Bongo Hop's Afro-Latin groove and new samba-funk from João Selva.
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