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84
JUNE 2012
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
SCOTT LACEY (GERSHON); TIM WHITE/GETTY IMAGES (ETHIOPIAN NATIONAL THEATRE)
a breath and raises the sax to his lips. Then, out it comes: a bewitching jazz
riff that blends into the song like cream into coffee. Gershonmight look like
an outsider, but the reality is far different. He just might be the best friend
this music has.
RUSS GERSHON FELL
for Ethiopian music almost two decades ago—and
fell for it hard—when friend and fellowmusicianMark Sandman of the band
Morphine gave him the CD
Ethiopian Groove: The Golden ’70s
. A reissue of
Ethiopian popular tunes, it had been released by Francis Falceto, a globe-
tro ing Frenchman and world-music devotee who also happened to be a
fierce advocate of Ethiopian sounds.
At the time, Gershon, a Harvard grad with a degree in philosophy, was
picking up recording gigs while leading his own 10-piece band in Boston. “I
thought, ‘Greatest albumtitle ever,’” he recalls, sipping the thick local arabica
on the veranda of Addis’ Taitu Hotel the morning a er the Jazzamba show.
He produces a copy of the disc and slides it across the table. “When I finally
sat down to listen, the music grabbed me and went into heavy rotation on
my CD player. I had an
intense
fan reaction.”
On the CD were rock and jazz numbers recorded in Ethiopia back in
the ’60s and ’70s, yielding a satisfyingly weird hybrid of deeply traditional
Abyssinian tunes gra ed onto Western pop arrangements. Gershon was a
typical musical omnivore—having first been an avid punk fan, then playing
NewWave in the ’80s, and then jazz—but Ethiopian music was a fixation to
end them all. The music so haunted him that in 1997 he wrote a few charts
for his band, Either/Orchestra, based on the scales and beats he’d heard on
the disc. Wanting to take it further, he sought out collaborators; fortunately
for him, Ethiopia’s best musicians had emigrated to New York, Boston
IT’S DUSK IN ADDIS ABABA,
and the drivers pulling up to the
10-foot-tall corrugated metal gate
outside Jazzamba beckon to the guard.
He’s ancient, wearing a dusty and
threadbare uniform of indeterminate
color a few sizes too big for him, looking
like the sole survivor of some long-
forgotten regiment. Moving slowly,
he swings the gate wide and herds
the Land Rovers, Toyotas and Hyundais
into three-deep rows.
Car doors open, and Ethiopia’s glitterati emerge
onto the dusty lot: ladies in eveningwear, grandmas
with updos, Rastas in dreadlocks, Chinese engineers,
business-casual Germans, college boys in penny
loafers and wayfaring Americans in torn jeans. Out-
side the gate, Addis Ababa, the fourth largest city in
Africa, is struggling to find its feet a er a decades-long
civil war, a devastating famine and a 40-year conflict
with the border region of Eritrea that ended with
partition and an uncomfortable truce in 2000. But
inside, music lovers young and old line up to shell
out 50
birr
(about $3) to be transported to a plush,
velvet-and-chandelier approximationof theNewYork
and Paris lounge scenes.
Onstage at Jazzamba are some of Addis’ greatest
contemporarymusicians. AyeleMamo, a scene veteran
now near 80, picks the mandolin. Henock Temesgen,
who lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. for 25 years
before returning to his native city, is
manning the bass. On guitar is the
incomparable Girum Mezmur. They
are all members of the Addis Acoustic
Project, a band devoted to the once-
endangered genre knownas Ethiojazz.
The current scene is young—the band
formed just two years ago and the club opened late
last year—but it’s already made these men famous.
The seeming misfit of the group stands at stage
right. He’s a hulking American sax player by the name
of Russ Gershon. He’s the only white guy up there,
but if he looks slightly uncomfortable it’s not because
he’s the odd man out—it’s because he’s hopelessly
jet-lagged. As the othermembers of thebandfind their
groove, the graying, bespectacled Gershon wets his
reed a few times and sways with the music.
Ethiojazz is deceptively simple, based on uniquely
un-Western scales. It goes deep. You can’t just waltz
in and jam. Thus, all eyes are on Gershon as he takes
“AFTER FIVE BARSOFMUSIC, THEWHOLE
AUDIENCE ROSEASONEANDBEGANTOSHOUT,
CLAP, STOMP. SOMEWERE EVENCRYING.”
SHOWTIME
The crowd at Jazzamba;
previous spread, from left, Addis Acoustic
Project members GirumMezmur, Bahta G.
Hiwot, Henock Temesgen and Dawit Frew